


A Transient and Embarrassed Phantom

by unspeakable3



Series: Ghost!Regulus AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Draco Malfoy is a Little Shit, Gen, Ghost Regulus Black, Ghosts, Good Regulus Black, Good Slytherins, Minor Character Death, POV Regulus Black, Past Character Death, Regulus Black Deserves Better, Regulus Black Feels, Regulus Black-centric, Slytherin, Slytherin Common Room, Slytherins Being Slytherins, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, the characters' views and opinions do not reflect those of the author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unspeakable3/pseuds/unspeakable3
Summary: Regulus Black died twelve years ago and was transported to Hogwarts, as a ghost. It's not the place he would have chosen to linger for all eternity, but he supposes it's pleasant enough.Winner, Best of 2020 r/FanFiction Awards
Relationships: Regulus Black & Albus Dumbledore, Regulus Black & Draco Malfoy, Regulus Black & Harry Potter, Regulus Black & Helena Ravenclaw, Regulus Black & Kreacher, Regulus Black & Severus Snape, Regulus Black & Theodore Nott
Series: Ghost!Regulus AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760914
Comments: 212
Kudos: 583
Collections: Genuary 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [幽灵：浮萍无根、格格不入](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28853250) by [Shadowzfc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowzfc/pseuds/Shadowzfc)



> Thank you to my beta, [kuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuchi/pseuds/kuchi), and the sampe champs for filling my head with ideas and the best kinds of nonsense.

The passage of time concerns the living far more than it does the dead. 

After all, what is a mere hour, or even a month, in comparison to the whole of eternity stretching out before you like a vast, unfathomable ocean? Or like a dark lake in a dark cave, its edges blending into a darkness so deep it makes your eyes ache to look at it, your head ache to try to calculate its vastness.

And during the long, stretching summers time passes even more peculiarly for the dead. Without the familiar beats of daily school life - classes, mealtimes, Quidditch practices and matches - the days all begin to blend together. Yesterday could be in three weeks’ time. Tomorrow could have happened months ago. Tuesdays and Saturdays and Mondays and Fridays all jumbled up, mixing together like potion ingredients. 

What is time, anyway, but a construct of the living? An attempt to partition their brief lives into briefer segments, in the hopes of deriving some sort of meaning from their daily grind?

That is to say, as Regulus drifted down the empty corridor, lost in his thoughts as he was wont to do, he had no idea that today was the first of September, let alone that the year was 1991. He had no idea that the castle was about to be inhabited by a child with Black blood for the first time since his own graduation or, more disturbingly, that the  _ Potter  _ child was also due to make his debut into the magical world. 

“Regulus, my friend!” 

Regulus paused his thinking and his drifting and looked up, blinking his still-grey eyes in surprise at the sight of the ghostly horde streaming down the corridor towards him. 

“Do you care to share your thoughts on how we might proceed with this Peeves situation, Regulus?” asked the Friar as he glided closer. 

“The Peeves situation?”

Sir Nicholas approached Regulus’s other side, his ridiculous plumed hat poking through Regulus’s head in a manner that would have been decidedly uncomfortable if he weren’t as translucent and unfeeling as the next ghost. 

“I have said it before and I shall say it again,” said Sir Nicholas, “the welcome feast is no place for a poltergeist.”

“I say we ought to live and let live,” said the Friar, chuckling at his own joke. 

“I suppose Peeves was somewhat disruptive last year,” Regulus said carefully. 

Peeves had spent most of the last first of September lying in wait underneath the staff table in the Great Hall. He only emerged once the welcome feast had been served, soaring up through the tabletop, skewering a whole roast chicken on his head before he began dancing quite inappropriately on top of Severus Snape’s dinner plate. 

Regulus hadn’t been the only one in the Great Hall that evening who had tried to hold back his laughter, but he did think that he had been the most successful. The headmaster really ought to have shown more dignity. 

“I am sure that our mischievous friend has learned his lesson,” said the Friar. 

“Poppycock!” said Sir Nicholas, thrusting his chest out. “Peeves is a terror. A menace!”

Regulus listened to the two senior ghosts’ argument as they all drifted through the castle, nodding and making appropriate thoughtful noises whenever called to. He didn’t particularly mind whether the poltergeist attended the feast or not - although he supposed that Peeves would liven things up a little if he did attend. This year’s sorting ceremony would be Regulus’s… eighteenth? Nineteenth? It was difficult to keep track of those sorts of things, when you were a ghost. 

Sir Nicholas would be able to tell him, of course. Sir Nicholas had a particular fascination for dates and calendars - Regulus suspected it was because he had lingered through the introduction of the Gregorian calendar - and kept an enormous one in an abandoned classroom which he used to count down to all the Hogwarts’ ghosts’ Deathdays. 

But Regulus didn’t want to ask Sir Nicholas, because he didn’t want to encourage further conversation about his own youthful afterlife, didn’t want to encourage Sir Nicholas to call him ‘whippersnapper’ any more than necessary, didn’t want to be told  _ yet again  _ how lucky he was to have such a thrilling death tale to tell. 

Regulus didn’t find the events surrounding his death thrilling at all. 

He was just glad that ghosts didn’t have to sleep, because he suspected that his nightmares would end up killing him all over again. 

They floated down the grand staircase, Regulus and Sir Nicholas and the Friar and all of the other ghosts of the castle, and drifted towards the Great Hall. But as they slipped through the wall of an ante-chamber Regulus froze, letting the others pass straight through him, because there, right in front of him, was a crowd of  _ children. _

And he realised that the ghosts’ debate - still ongoing - about whether to allow Peeves to attend the welcome feast was for nothing, because the welcome feast was  _ tonight.  _

Regulus hovered half-way through the chamber wall as he tried to regain his bearings. His eyes were drawn to a bright shock of ginger hair among the dark robes and dark pointed hats.  _ Another Weasley _ , he thought piteously, hoping that this one would take after Percy rather than those rambunctious twins. And next to the Weasley—

_ No. _

Regulus would have retreated right back through the wall again and sped off to the tallest, loneliest turret to sulk and grumble in peace if Lady Helena, bringing up the rear of the ghostly horde, hadn’t smiled that shy smile of hers and beckoned him forwards. 

Because next to the Weasley was a small child with a mess of dark hair, the very likeness of Regulus’s nemesis, that hateful Potter who had  _ stolen his brother  _ as though the fight for Sirius’s affections were a mere sport. 

The child must have turned eleven without Regulus’s knowledge. Without his say-so. Regulus stuck his nose in the air and followed Lady Helena through the ante-chamber and into the Great Hall; she was right, of course. He oughtn’t spend an eternity brooding over an idiot Potter who didn’t even exist anymore. Still, Regulus didn’t dare to look at any of the other first-year children, terrified at the prospect of seeing yet more of his tortured memories turned flesh.

The Slytherin house ghost, the Bloody Baron, was sat sullenly at the end of the table furthest from the door. When he spotted Regulus drifting towards him he upped and left, taking a seat at the other end, beside the Head Girl; she made a valiant effort at concealing how uneasy she was about the new seating arrangements. Regulus resolved to ask the house-elves to take something to her as a reward, perhaps an extra blanket for her bed in the chilly Slytherin dormitory. 

Regulus sat himself among a group of second-years talking at a disturbingly rapid pace about their excitement to witness their first sorting ceremony from  _ this  _ side of the Great Hall. 

The girl sitting beside him - Verity Avery, excellent Herbologist - turned to greet Regulus with a smile, which he forced himself to return.

“Are you looking forward to meeting Draco?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your cousin, Draco Malfoy!” Verity said, laughing as though he had made a joke.

“Oh. Right. Of course; yes. Very much so.”

In truth, Regulus hadn’t realised that his cousin’s son would be starting at Hogwarts this year. He had heard the news of Draco’s birth from his great-grandfather, Phineas Nigellus, who had been able to provide him with vague and irregular family updates through his linked portraits in the headmaster’s office and at Grimmauld Place for as long as Walburga had remained alive. 

Draco had been born nine months after Regulus’s death.

Regulus had always found the timing rather odd.

Still, he was eager to meet this boy. He wondered whether Draco would take after Narcissa, or Lucius - he wondered whether Draco had any younger siblings, perhaps born after Walburga had passed. He wondered how much Draco knew about  _ him _ , if Narcissa had told her son about her once-favourite cousin ( _ not that there had been much competition at the time,  _ Regulus thought, ruefully) or if Lucius had prevented her from telling their child anything at all about the family turn-cloak, the blood-traitor.

Regulus wondered if Sirius had usurped his position in Narcissa’s affections, as bizarre as that sounded. 

A pair of large boys and a girl with straight blonde hair had joined the Slytherin table before it was Draco’s turn to be sorted. Regulus turned to watch in anticipation: the boy carried himself like his father had done - a pity - but his delicate features were all Narcissa’s. The Sorting Hat had barely brushed against the top of Draco’s head before it yelled out  _ ‘SLYTHERIN!’  _ and Regulus joined in the applause even though his ghostly hands were unable to make a sound. 

Draco sauntered over to the Slytherin table and the two bigger boys slid apart to make room for him. Regulus chivvied a small dark-haired girl out of the way - she seemed most put-out - and sat opposite his little cousin.

“Hello,” Regulus said, smiling eagerly. He hoped the dark scratches on his neck weren’t too visible, or too spooky, in the flickering candlelight. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Draco.”

“And you are…?” asked Draco with a sneer. 

“I’m your cousin—”

“I thought my cousin was in Azkaban,” Draco said, looking Regulus up and down. 

“No, that’s my brother Sirius,” Regulus said, feeling quite wrong-footed by this small, pointy-faced boy. “I’m Regulus. I died before you were born.”

“Oh. Well  _ I’ve _ never heard of you.”

Draco turned away from Regulus and went back to talking with his two heavy-set friends. Regulus sat in silence and raised a pale hand to his chest, feeling a phantom ache where his heart had once beaten. 

“He’s incredibly rude, not at all like I expected,” Draco said loudly. He had drawn the attention of all the new first-years, as well as half the second-years. “Wouldn’t even shake my hand. Of course, he  _ was  _ raised by muggles so I suppose it’s no surprise that his manners are lacking.”

“Did you see the scar?” the blonde girl asked.

“Yes. Hideous thing. Nothing to get all excited about.”

_ The scar.  _ Regulus looked back towards the staff table, his eyes widening as he saw that the miniature version of his nemesis was sat waiting to be sorted. He seemed to have been there quite a while; the rest of the hall was filled with whispered gossip, with students craning their necks to get a good look at the so-called Boy-Who-Lived. 

And when the hat finally announced that this Potter -  _ Harry,  _ Regulus remembered, belatedly, a terribly boring name - would be joining the Gryffindors, just as his father had done, Regulus rolled his eyes and tried to block out the thunderous applause. 

Draco continued bad-mouthing Harry throughout the duration of the feast, telling anyone who would listen how he had gone to introduce himself to the boy on the Hogwarts Express, intending to ease his transition into the wizarding world and get him started on the right foot. Apparently the latest Weasley child had already ‘dug his dirty claws in’ and dragged Harry ‘down with the rest of the blood-traitors’. 

Regulus restrained himself from commenting, but only just. 

“He’ll go the same way as his parents,” Draco said airily. “They’ve never known what’s good for them, the Potters.”

“Don’t worry, Draco,” said the dark-haired girl. “We don’t need the likes of that little brat, not in Slytherin.”

She leaned through Regulus to stretch across the table and pat Draco’s pale hand; he jerked it away, scowling. 

“I’m not  _ worried _ ,” he scoffed. “Pass me those potatoes, Crabbe. They’re the only thing here worth eating. Father warned me that the Hogwarts elves wouldn’t be up to scratch but I didn’t expect their cooking to be  _ this  _ awful.”

Regulus smiled at this comment, remembering how terrible he had found the Hogwarts fare during his first term, too. While it was true that the house-elves in the kitchens didn’t have quite the  _ finesse  _ that he and, presumably, Draco had been used to as children, that wasn’t to say that they were terrible cooks. Just different. 

“You’ll get used to the food,” Regulus said, launching into another attempt at talking to his cousin. “Do your family still have Dobby? He made the most excellent custard tarts, if I recall correctly.”

“Yes,” said Draco, still scowling. “But I  _ shan’t  _ get used to this. I will write to Mother as soon as we get to the common room. She can’t expect me to eat this  _ slop  _ until December.”

After the feast had concluded Regulus helped the Slytherin prefects guide the students on their short journey out of the Great Hall and through the dungeons to their common room. He found himself in the company of the Slytherin Chasers, now in their third year and desperate to prove themselves.

“We’ve been practising all summer,” explained Graham. “Different formations and that. Adesy’s dad put hoops up in the paddock, didn’t he Ade?”

Adrian nodded. “Yeah. Lots of injuries, but at least Charlie got to practice on us.”

Adrian’s sister, Charlotte, had finished at Hogwarts last summer and gone straight into training to become a Healer at St Mungo’s. 

“My arm’s still a bit sore,” Cassius said, rubbing his elbow.

“He’s fine,” Graham said hurriedly to Regulus. “Will you come to try-outs? Flinto hopes there’ll be some new Seekers. Reckon he’ll decapitate Higgsy if he’s as crap as last year.”

“Language,” Regulus said half-heartedly. 

“He can’t be any worse,” Adrian snorted.

“What kind of Seeker has never caught the snitch?” sniggered Cassius.

“I’ll come to try-outs,” Regulus said, glancing around in case poor Terrence Higgs happened to be nearby and had overheard his teammates’ slander. “I’m sure Terrence has spent his summer practising just as much as you three have.”

Once they reached the common room the three Chasers hurried over to the coveted armchairs beside the fireplace, only to be moved along by a group of snarling seventh-years. Regulus left them to it and turned his attention to the new students: Draco was hurrying off in the direction of the dormitories with the two bigger boys. The others had gathered themselves together in the centre of the room, most looking quite uneasy but trying to hide it. The dark-haired girl - Pansy, Regulus thought she had been called - was gazing wistfully after Draco.

“Hello,” he said gently as he drifted over to the group. One of the girls gave a start; an unfortunate muggle-born among the Slytherins, perhaps. “My name is Regulus. It wasn’t so long ago that I was in your position, fresh-faced and full of nerves. I hope that your next seven years in Slytherin are filled with happiness and excitement, but I want you all to know that you can come to me if you have any worries, or fears, or anxieties. I can assure you that I have probably had experience with whatever it is that is on your mind.”

He smiled at them. A couple of the girls gave nervous giggles. 

“You’ll usually find me here in the common room during the evenings,” he continued. “Or in the library. Or at Quidditch matches, of course.”

“Do you play Quidditch?” asked the taller of the girls. “Sorry—  _ did  _ you play?”

“Yes, I did. I was Seeker for six years,” Regulus said proudly. 

She cooed; the dark-haired girl, Pansy, gave him a scrutinising look.

“You said you were Draco’s cousin. Were you a Malfoy?” she asked sharply. 

“No. My family name is Black.” 

The few children who hadn’t been paying attention now looked up at him, their mouths dropping open slightly. 

“ _ Is that a bad thing? _ ” whispered the muggle-born girl. The tall girl shushed her, elbowing her sharply. 

Regulus gripped his hands tightly behind his back and looked about the room, embarrassed as he always was by the attention that his name brought. Perhaps one of these years he would pretend to be someone else, someone insignificant… a Yaxley, perhaps. 

Luckily for Regulus, the Head Girl chose to make an appearance and hurried all the first-years off to find their beds and get a good night’s sleep before their classes began. Regulus waved farewell and drifted over to one of the tall windows that looked out into the depths of the lake, alternating between looking out for merpeople and watching the fierce chess match being played out near the smaller fireplace. 

The common room quickly emptied - students, no matter their age, were often wearied by the long journey to Hogwarts - but Regulus lingered by the window. He could well recall his first night at Hogwarts, how odd and unfamiliar everything had felt, how cold and lonely he had been despite being surrounded by more people than he ever had been before in his life. 

He had crept out of bed that first night to sit in this very position, unable to sleep. And while Evan had been there to comfort and reassure him, Regulus knew that not every child was as fortunate as he had been to come to Hogwarts with a friend already made. 

So he waited beside the window, just in case he was needed. 

Some time after midnight, as the embers in the fireplaces were dwindling and the common room was succumbing to darkness, Regulus heard movement. He looked towards the dormitories and saw a thin, weedy boy standing in the doorway. 

“Hello,” Regulus said softly. “Would you care to join me?”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you, I’ll just…”

“I wouldn’t mind the company if you were willing. The afterlife can be quite lonely.”

The boy gave him a shy smile and hesitantly crossed the room to sit beside Regulus on the window ledge, his shoulders hunched up by his ears. Regulus couldn’t recall if the boy had introduced himself at dinner. 

“My name is Regulus,” he prompted.

“I remember,” the boy said. “I’m Theodore. Theodore Nott.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Theodore.”

Regulus turned back to the window and watched Theodore out of the corner of his eye. The boy was twisting his hands in his lap, stretching his pyjama sleeves down over his hands and pulling at the threads there. Regulus was reminded of how he used to do the same thing, how his mother would scold him for looking unkempt, how he had learned to hide the damage he had done to his clothing. 

It was a shame he couldn’t now hide the damage he had done to his body.

“Are you related to Iris Nott, by any chance?” Regulus asked, breaking the silence.

“She’s my aunt,” said Theodore. “She’s a Parkinson, now. Pansy’s mum.”

“Ah. That explains Pansy’s…  _ hmm _ .” 

Regulus coughed, just about managing to prevent himself from badmouthing an eleven-year-old in front of her classmate.

“Did you know Aunt Iris?” Theodore asked.

“We were at school together, although I didn’t get along with her particularly well.”

“But she’s a lot older than—  _ oh _ . Sorry,” said Theodore, looking away as his cheeks flushed pink.

“I was eighteen when I died in 1979,” Regulus said quietly. “I expect Iris looks quite a bit more mature than I do by now.”

“Yeah, just a bit.”

Theodore gave him another small smile and shifted on the window ledge so he could look out into the lake. They sat in silence for a while, watching stringy pieces of seaweed and the odd grindylow drift by.

“It feels weird, being underwater,” Theodore said. 

“It does.”

It had taken Regulus years, after his death, to be able to sit beside the windows and look out into the water again. Even now, years later, he sometimes shuddered to see his pale reflection; still imagined that he could see the inferi hurtling towards him through the water, their long nails clawing at the glass window as they tried to scratch and bite and drown him once more. 

“I grew to find the sound of the water comforting,” Regulus murmured. “Peaceful. I hope it will be the same for you.”

“Is it true, about the squid?”

“There is a giant squid that lives in the lake, yes,” said Regulus. “It’s particularly fond of strawberry jam on white toast.”

Theodore jerked his head up, wide-eyed in surprise.

“If you cut a slice of toast into long strips and float them on the surface of the water, you might see the squid pop up to feed,” Regulus explained. “A most impressive sight.”

“Draco said it didn’t exist. That it was just a stupid story for children.”

“Draco was wrong.”

Theodore nodded uncertainly. “I’m sorry. I know he’s your cousin.”

“It’s no matter,” Regulus shrugged. “Do you know Draco well?”

Theodore shifted and began pulling at his sleeves again.

“Our fathers are business associates,” he murmured.

“I understand.”

Regulus knew very well that the term ‘business associates’ had little to do with business for families like the Malfoys and the Notts… and the Blacks. He could still remember the coded language he had learned to use at school during his teenage years, when it was not possible to speak too plainly even with your closest friends, for fear that they would spill your secrets to the Ministry. Or, worse, to the Dark Lord himself. 

“I met your father once or twice.”

Theodore looked up again in alarm. “During… during the war?”

Regulus nodded. He wondered how much Theodore had been told about the extent of his involvement in the war, or the actions that had led to his death. His first few years as a ghost had been difficult, with children of both sides of the war furious at or terrified of him: the children of Death Eaters knew him as the Black heir turned traitor; the others as a villain killed either for his hubris or his cowardice. 

No one had known the truth, of course. No one knew the full truth, even now.

“If there is anything you wish to discuss with me, about… about anything,” Regulus said quietly, watching Theodore’s reflection in the window. “I will listen. I may not be able to provide answers or solutions, but I will always listen.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Regulus is a ghost. Harry and Draco get Sorted. Regulus wants to mother all the sad, lonely Slytherins.

Hogwarts was filled with gossip. Echoes of whispers and murmurs and excited squeals reverberated around the stone-floored and stone-walled corridors, reaching even the high rafters where Regulus liked to sit and observe from time to time. He ought to have realised that the castle’s rumour mill wouldn’t have died along with Evan Rosier, the main instigator of gossip during Regulus’s own schooldays, but it was a rather nasty surprise to suddenly have the name  _ Potter  _ on everyone’s lips once more. 

Granted, Harry didn’t appear to particularly enjoy being the centre of attention as much as his father had, but that fact did little to ease the twisting, sickening feeling Regulus experienced every time he heard the boy’s surname. 

Draco was the only other occupant of the castle that seemed to dislike the name Potter as much as Regulus did. 

He had been almost continuously bad-mouthing Harry to anyone that would listen, repeating the story of their exchange on the Hogwarts Express over and over until even shy little Tracey Davis, the sole muggle-born student in that year’s Slytherin cohort, had yelled at him to put a sock in it. 

This had, predictably, enraged Draco. But he had since changed tact, attempting instead to persuade the student body that  _ he  _ was far more worthy of being talked about than the Boy-Who-Lived. He boasted about his family and his wealth and his perceived intelligence in increasingly desperate attempts to draw attention away from Harry and back towards himself. He stuck his chin in the air and looked down his nose at everyone with a haughty, arrogant look that reminded Regulus, distressingly, of himself as an eleven-year-old. 

Draco’s posturing worked on some of his classmates. The two large boys, Vincent and Gregory, were very loyal to him - or perhaps just too stupid to form their own opinions. Regulus had heard from Violet, the most gossipy portrait in all of Hogwarts, that Gregory had spent the duration of his first Astronomy class peering through the wrong end of his telescope. Whether out of loyalty or stupidity, both boys could usually be found standing sentry on either side of Draco like bodyguards.

Two of the first-year girls, Pansy and Eloise, seemed utterly enamoured by Draco. They were happy to sit and listen to Draco all evening long as he draped himself languidly over a green armchair and held court among his classmates. 

Theodore mostly kept his distance from Draco, choosing instead to strike up a tentative friendship with the blonde girl, Daphne, and a couple of second-years that Regulus occasionally accompanied to the debate team meetings. Unfortunately, Theodore still hurried to Draco’s side whenever he was summoned; Regulus suspected it had something to do with their fathers’  _ business relationship  _ rather than any genuine friendship. 

“There he is!” said a voice in an excited squeal.

Regulus leaned forward from his perch on the ceiling beam, peering through his knees at the top of the children’s heads below.

“Where?”

“Next to that ginger kid!”

“With the glasses?”

“Yeah! Oi, POTTER!”

Regulus gave a heavy sigh, wishing the act was as effective as it had been when he’d been alive and could actually exhale breath, and floated up through the ceiling to the next floor where he could hopefully escape the memory of his nemesis for just  _ one  _ day.

He was drifting down corridor after corridor, not paying much heed to where he was going, trying not to think about how much he hated James  _ bloody  _ Potter, when a pair of first-years unexpectedly opened a door he had been about to pass through. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Regulus said quickly - he could well remember that horrible cold, damp feeling a warm-blooded living body experienced when a ghost glided through them - and withdrew.

“S’alright,” the taller boy muttered as he inched past Regulus, trying not to pass through him again. 

But Regulus was frozen in place. Because the shorter boy had James Potter’s nose and James Potter’s chin and James Potter’s ridiculous bloody  _ hair _ . 

Harry’s hand flew up to his forehead, self-consciously trying to flatten his disturbingly messy hair and conceal his scar. Regulus realised he had been staring and glanced away.

“Excuse me,” he said quietly, and sank back down through the floor.

Regulus found himself passing through the ceiling of Professor Flitwick’s classroom and took a seat at an empty table near the back of the room. 

In the traumatic weeks immediately after his death, Regulus had often sat in on various lessons, finding a sense of normalcy in drifting among the faces he could recognise, no matter how horrified they often were to see him. 

But as his old schoolmates grew and matured and eventually moved on from Hogwarts, leaving Regulus behind, the lessons took on a new meaning to him. He went to classes he had never dared attend while he had been living - Muggle Studies, of course, but also Care of Magical Creatures - and made sure to keep paying attention in other lessons so he could help the younger students with their essays whenever they needed him. 

A few minutes after he had arrived, the Charms classroom door flew open with a bang and Harry Potter and the Weasley came rushing in, apologising for their tardiness though Flitwick didn’t seem to mind. Regulus felt himself tensing and almost left the classroom again but forced himself to stay, and observe; to see for himself whether Harry had inherited as much of his father’s personality as he had his appearance.

Not much, it seemed. Regulus had never had the displeasure of sharing a classroom with James Potter, but he imagined he would have been as irritating a classmate as he was everything else: leaning back in his chair, as Sirius had always done, trying to catch girls’ attention, tossing notes across the classroom, constantly chatting to his friends, making a general nuisance of himself. 

But Harry did none of those things. Despite his tardy arrival he set quickly to work, sitting quietly beside the Weasley and taking diligent notes. He ignored the whispers and stares from his classmates and kept focused on Professor Flitwick’s lecture, his quill moving swiftly across his parchment. 

And as the class came to an end, Harry packed away his belongings and left his desk just as tidy as he had found it, moving along to his next class with the rest of the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw first-years. 

Regulus drifted towards the front of the class and greeted his old Charms professor.

“Ah, Regulus,” said Professor Flitwick with a smile. 

“The new first-years are an interesting bunch,” Regulus said. “Everyone is talking about Harry Potter, of course…”

“Yes, indeed! I had hoped he might be sorted into Ravenclaw, but with parents like Lily and James I don’t suppose there was any question that he’d be placed somewhere other than Gryffindor!”

“Yes, of course…”

Professor Flitwick had nothing but fond memories of James. The same was true of Sir Nicholas - “Oh, the larks he would get up to with those companions of his - and such a handsome fellow!” - and the other ghosts were quite disinterested. The Friar suggested that he ask Peeves, since James and Sirius and the others had often been in cahoots with the poltergeist, but Regulus didn’t think he was quite that desperate yet. 

He drifted back to the Slytherin common room and sat in his usual seat beside the lake, wondering whether his memories of James had twisted into something rather more terrible than they actually had been in life. 

He stayed there for hours as students came to and from their classes and eventually began to settle around the common room after they had finished eating their dinners in the Great Hall. 

Regulus was still musing about James when a familiar haughty voice cut through his thoughts. 

“My father has always said that goblins can’t be trusted.”

He glanced across the room in the direction of the voice and saw Draco holding court in his usual armchair, holding a copy of the  _ Daily Prophet  _ in one hand while he gesticulated with the other. 

“ _ We  _ keep all our heirlooms and such things in the Manor, of course. It’s  _ far  _ more secure. Father says that goblins sulk in their caves waiting for the day when they can get their grubby hands on our treasures. I pity those who cannot afford to secure their own homes,” he said, casting a scornful glance at Eloise Midgen. The girl looked away, her cheeks flushing pink.

Regulus frowned. Either Lucius Malfoy had drastically changed his opinion on Gringotts, or Draco was bluffing. He recalled Lucius being particularly smug after completing the marriage negotiations with Narcissa’s parents, boasting to anyone who would listen that his bride would come with an ancient, dragon-guarded vault deep within the underground tunnels of Gringotts.

Unless Lucius had in his possession something so valuable that he didn’t  _ dare  _ entrust it to the goblins. Regulus narrowed his eyes, mulling over this thought.

“What do you think the thieves were after, Draco?” asked Pansy.

“Gold, I expect,” Draco said dismissively.

“I doubt anyone who had the ability to break into Gringotts would do so just for a bit of gold,” said Blaise, a handsome boy who seemed to rival only Draco in his arrogance.

“And I suppose murdering your husbands is a much easier way to get gold, _Zabini,_ ” Pansy sniffed. 

As Draco burst into laughter - much to Pansy’s delight - Blaise curled his hands into fists and began to rise from his chair.

“My mother has  _ never _ — you’re even more stupid than you look if you believe those  _ ridiculous  _ rumours, Parkinson.”

“Crabbe, Goyle,” Draco said lazily with a wave of his hand.

His two eleven-year-old bodyguards moved from their position either side of Draco’s armchair and stepped between Pansy and Blaise, looking quite menacing. Blaise gave a derisive snort and marched out of the common room, beckoning Theodore on his way out.

Draco’s little group settled back down and Regulus floated over to the bookshelves, where a stack of the current week’s  _ Daily Prophets  _ were always kept. He flipped through the pile - the students, as always, had neglected to keep them in chronological order - until he found what he was looking for.

“ _ Gringotts break-in latest… _ ” he read in a murmur, as he smoothed the paper out.

Bizarrely, it appeared that someone had foolishly attempted to break into Gringotts, which claimed to be among the most secure institutions in the wizarding world. Even more bizarrely, they had been successful.

And yet nothing had been stolen: the vault had already been emptied, back in July, on the same day the theft had been attempted. 

It was highly unusual for someone to empty an entire vault. Families often kept all their valuables at Gringotts - apart from the ones they kept on display, of course - as well as their gold, there would be hideous heirlooms that nobody wanted, jewellery that their great-great-aunt had cursed on her deathbed, that sort of thing. 

Regulus’s own, smaller vault, a private off-shoot of the main Black family one, had been filled with galleons, each of his old broomsticks (tenderly lain on velvet pillows), and part of his transfigured horcrux research—

He froze, his hand trembling over the newsprint. He looked back down at the page but it didn’t mention which vault had been broken into, because of  _ course  _ it wouldn’t, the goblins didn’t even want to say  _ what  _ the thieves had been looking for, never mind  _ where  _ they had been looking.

They would have informed him, wouldn’t they? If someone had tried to break into his vault? He might be a ghost, he might be  _ dead _ , but he still had rights, didn’t he? It was still  _ his  _ vault, wasn’t it? 

Regulus sprung into action, cleaving through a cluster of fourth-years who squealed at the icy intrusion and leapt out of his path. He passed straight through the common room wall and up through the dungeon ceiling to the History of Magic classroom on the fourth floor.

“Professor Binns?” he called out frantically, poking his head through the blackboard and into the teacher’s office in his desperation.

Professor Binns looked up from the stack of parchment on his desk and blinked owlishly at Regulus.

“Professor Binns,” Regulus repeated, swooping through the wall to hover beside his old teacher’s desk. “What do you know about Gringotts? Specifically about family vaults?”

“Not a great deal,” he said slowly. “I have only written a handful of essays on the subject…”

“Do you— do you know what would have happened to my vault? After I died?”

Professor Binns clasped his ghostly hands in front of his chest and pursed his lips. Regulus, normally appreciative of the care and deliberation the teacher always took when answering questions, felt terribly impatient.

“In normal circumstances, a wizard’s vault would be passed to his heir,” said Professor Binns.

“I didn’t have an heir,” Regulus said, irritably.

“No, of course, you were very young… in which case, it ought to have passed to your next-of-kin.”

“To Mother. And after her?”

Professor Binns looked up at him, blinking again.

Regulus wilted, floating down to the floor and resting his head on his arms on the edge of Professor Binns’ desk.

“Sirius,” Regulus groaned into his arms.

“A relation of yours?”

“Yes,” Regulus mumbled. “My brother.”

He sunk down through the stone floor entirely and drifted back towards the common room. He thought he might haunt the dungeon corridors while he mused about Sirius, the damp cold atmosphere beneath the lake a soothing balm for the fire that burned in him whenever his brother was brought to mind. 

Because Regulus didn’t like to think about Sirius. Hadn’t needed to think about him for almost a decade. And now the Potter boy had turned up and disrupted Regulus’s peace with painful memories of bloody  _ James _ , which necessitated thinking about Sirius and his impulsiveness and his betrayal _.  _ And now Sirius had access to Regulus’s Gringotts vault, and all the meticulously-collected research within which could, potentially, be more dangerous than anything bloody Lucius Malfoy might be trying to hide.

He thought he had known Sirius. Hated him, at times. Envied him, always. But known him nevertheless. It rankled that Sirius could have spent the entirety of his teenage years yelling his head off about muggle-born rights and equality and justice, could have abandoned his brother, his  _ real  _ brother, for the bloody Potters, and then… what? Betrayed them? Betrayed James? Somehow had his stubborn, obstinate mind turned towards the Dark Lord after all?

It was a  _ joke _ . That both Black brothers had ended up switching sides - that both had been seized by a madness that resulted in them betraying their friends, betraying their  _ families _ . That both Black brothers had ended up turncloaks. Traitors.

It was a joke, but the world believed it to be true.

And yet…

“Watch where you’re drifting,  _ Black _ .”

Regulus looked up in surprise and caught a glimpse of Severus Snape’s scowl before he spun on his heel, his robes whirling behind him. Regulus rolled his eyes and wondered, not for the first time, if Severus deliberately acted in such a melodramatic fashion just to rub in the fact that Regulus couldn’t partake in the enjoyment of swishing his own robes now that he was dead. 

“Wait, Severus,” he called out, before he had even realised he was speaking.

A distraction from his brother was always a welcome thing, even if that distraction was Severus Snape. 

Severus stilled, and glanced over his shoulder.

“A word, if I may?” Regulus said politely.

He turned around fully and glowered. Regulus waited patiently for this little charade to be over; Severus knew full well that Regulus could drift through his office wall and sit on his desk like the irritant he considered him to be until the so-called Potions Master deigned to speak. It wasn’t exactly polite, and it was certainly against ghostly etiquette to wander into a living being’s private quarters at will, but Regulus had never been against resorting to desperate measures in life, and he certainly wasn’t in death. 

“Fine,” Severus snapped, and Regulus followed him into his office. 

It was as dark and gloomy as the man himself, with a handful of flickering candles and shelves stretching up to the ceiling, stacked with various jars and canisters holding all sorts of intriguing things. Regulus stared into a jar full of floating eyeballs, his own eyes widening when one slowly rotated and  _ winked  _ at him.

“I assume you bothered me for a reason and not just to stare at my belongings, Black.”

Regulus turned around and forced a benign smile onto his face. 

“What do you make of our new first-years?” he asked. 

“Just as useless as the last lot,” Severus said snidely. 

“Even Harry Potter?”

Severus’s jaw twitched. “He’s every bit as arrogant as his father was.”

“Peculiar,” Regulus said lightly, swooping across the room to peer at the scattered papers and herbs across Severus’s desk. “I thought he seemed quite different. Embarrassed by all the attention he has been receiving. Shy, almost.”

“Your wits must have faded as much as the rest of you, Black,” Severus spat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a detention to administer.”

Regulus drifted towards the office door and paused, turning back for one last jibe. 

“I have far more reason to hate the child than you do, Severus,” he said. “After all, his father stole my brother. The only thing he took from  _ you  _ was the vague hope that Lily could bear to look at you once more.”

The fury on Severus’s face was delightful to behold and Regulus left, feeling quite pleased with himself as he floated along the corridor to the common room. 

He passed Vincent and Gregory - perhaps they were the students heading for detention - and hurried forwards, hoping at last that he would be able to talk to Draco one-on-one without his burly bodyguards looming near. 

As Regulus had hoped, Draco was sat, alone, in his usual armchair. He looked rather forlorn without his entourage around him and kept casting sullen glances over his shoulder; Theodore and Daphne looked to be working on their homework together, while the other first-year girls were giggling nearby. 

“Hello Draco,” Regulus said breezily. 

He settled down on the arm of Draco’s chair, determined to drag at least  _ some  _ conversation out of the boy. Draco gave an exaggerated shiver and shifted his weight away from his spectral cousin.

“How are you enjoying your classes so far, Draco?”

“Fine,” he said, inspecting his fingernails. “Everyone says that I am very talented. Particularly at Potions.”

“Very good… and how do you find Professor Snape?”

“He’s  _ brilliant, _ ” Draco breathed, eyes gleaming.

Regulus frowned. He didn’t think he would have ever expected anyone to describe Severus as ‘brilliant’ in the context of his teaching abilities - year after year of students had come to him with complaints about the ornery professor. 

But Lucius had always been fond of his protégé, and perhaps Severus had known Draco before Hogwarts and gained favour with the boy - odd that Severus hadn’t mentioned it during their brief conversation, though. 

Still, Regulus felt a flush of regret that he had not been afforded the same privilege - by all rights he should have been Draco’s godfather. Narcissa had promised him as much, on his seventeenth birthday, before it all turned to shit.

“He’s not like the other teachers, he doesn’t care about Potter’s  _ celebrity _ . He doesn’t give him special treatment like the rest of them. Did you know,” Draco said, sitting up straighter and clearly warming to this topic. “Professor Snape asked the most  _ basic  _ questions and Potter didn’t know a  _ single  _ thing! He doesn’t even know what a bezoar is, can you imagine?”

“He has grown up in the muggle world,” Regulus said diplomatically.

“So?” Draco scoffed. “He’s got a textbook, hasn’t he? Every five-year-old knows what a bezoar is. Even that stupid mudblood knows more than Potter, squirming about like someone shoved a flobberworm down her shirt.” 

Draco did a rather insulting impression of this girl, sticking his teeth out over his bottom lip and lifting himself up off his chair, his arm stretched towards the ceiling.

“ _ Pick me, Professor! Oh, pick me, pick me! _ ” Draco squealed, before collapsing back into his chair in fits of laughter.

Regulus gave him a wan smile. Clearly Narcissa had done nothing to school Lucius’s language around their son.

“Anyway, Potter ought to be embarrassed at his stupidity but of course he just sits there all smug and arrogant,” Draco continued. “Professor Snape sees right through him, of course. Took points off him for being a stupid prat. The Gryffindors are  _ all  _ complete idiots, I don’t know why everyone thinks Hufflepuff is the house for morons - Longbottom managed to  _ melt  _ his cauldron and disrupt the entire lesson!”

_ Longbottom.  _ Draco’s aunt and uncle had tortured that boy’s parents into insanity. Regulus had heard about it from Phineas Nigellus - Bellatrix had returned to Grimmauld Place to gloat about it to Walburga afterwards. Had told Walburga that  _ she  _ ought to be the heir, that  _ she  _ was more man than either of Walburga’s pathetic sons.

_ Shit _ — what if Regulus’s vault had passed along to Bellatrix, the oldest of his cousins, since Sirius had been disinherited? What if—

“Professor Snape said that my potion was perfect, obviously,” said Draco, interrupting Regulus’s thoughts. “He particularly praised the way I stewed my horned slugs.”

He looked at Regulus expectantly; Regulus blinked, and inclined his head.

“I’m sure your slugs were outstanding, Draco.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Regulus is still a ghost. Draco thinks Snape is an excellent teacher and Harry is an arrogant twerp. Regulus worries that his Gringotts vault has been broken into.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to my beta [kuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuchi/pseuds/kuchi)!

“My father says it’s preposterous that first years aren’t allowed to try out for the house teams.”

Regulus had been reading that morning’s  _ Daily Prophet  _ over Adrian Pucey’s shoulder - no further news on the Gringotts break-in, just some nonsense about a mysterious batch of false-bottomed cauldrons imported from the continent - but looked up, and glanced down the long table towards the penetrating sound of Draco’s voice.

“Eleven-year-olds aren’t skilled enough to play—”

“And what would you know about it, Starpepper?” Draco snapped at the second-year who had dared to interrupt him. “My father says that I am an excellent flyer and incredibly advanced for my age.”

Ruby Starpepper rolled her eyes in quite a dramatic fashion and turned her back to Draco. The boy continued, unperturbed, brandishing his fork in the air as though he were Professor Flitwick orchestrating the school choir.

“My father has written to the Headmaster  _ and  _ to Professor Snape - they’re on very good terms, you know - to persuade them to reconsider these ridiculous old-fashioned rules. He’s on the Board of Governors, you know, my father. He holds a lot of authority over this school.”

Regulus sighed and looked up at the Great Hall’s enchanted ceiling; a pale blue sky with fluffy smudges of clouds, today. He scratched absent-mindedly at a long silvery scar on his neck and wondered how long it would take the older Slytherins to start taking bets on how many times Draco could say  _ my father  _ in a single day. 

“Father wanted me to go to Durmstrang, of course, but Mother was quite insistent that I remain in Britain and come to Hogwarts. I suppose she wanted me within flooing distance. Witches can be  _ so  _ sentimental.”

As Draco delved into the latest parcel he had received from his mother, his face lit up with glee as he pulled out package after package of baked goods and sweet treats, Regulus wondered whether he wasn’t just as sentimental as Narcissa.

“Didn’t you say that  _ you  _ were on the Slytherin team when you were a student, Regulus?”

Regulus tore his eyes away from the way Draco was tenderly unwrapping a bundle of Honeydukes chocolate bars -  _ Merlin  _ did he miss their almond-honey-nougat chocolate - and found Millicent Bulstrode, the tallest of the Slytherin first-  _ and  _ second-year girls, looking at him curiously.

“Yes,” he said, eyes darting between Millicent and the chocolate. “I played Seeker.”

“Perhaps you could give Draco some tips - he’d like to go for Seeker too, wouldn’t you Draco?”

“I don’t need any  _ tips _ ,” Draco said irritably. “My father said that I could play for England if I wanted to.”

Regulus couldn’t help but smile; his own uncle - Draco’s  _ great- _ uncle, if he had still been alive - had once said the same about him. Before Sirius had left and passed on the duties of heir, of course. The Black heir couldn’t even consider doing something as ignoble as playing professional Quidditch.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake you’re  _ eleven _ ,” Ruby huffed as she rose from the table, clearly having reached her limit of first-year posturing for one morning. 

Draco opened his mouth and Regulus quickly jumped in before the boy could begin yet another argument with an older housemate.

“Draco,” he said, grasping for a neutral topic of conversation and failing. “Which team do you support? If I recall, your father followed the Arrows.”

“Yes, we Malfoys have always supported the Arrows,” Draco replied, narrowing his eyes.

_ Always  _ being a fairly recent turn of events, of course; only since Draco’s grandfather had begun investing his overflowing galleons into the team.

“I’m a Tornadoes man, myself,” said Regulus.

“ _ Glory-hunter _ ,” Millicent coughed.

Draco whipped his head around, scowling at her. 

“Don’t be so rude to my cousin!” he snapped, most unexpectedly.

“I was only joking,” Millicent said, her eyes wide.

“It’s alright,” said Regulus. “I’m not offended. I’d rather be considered a glory-hunter than support a team that languishes at the bottom of the league year after year. Who do you support, Millicent?”

“The Holyhead Harpies, of course.”

“That explains a lot,” Draco muttered.

“What do you—”

“Millie!” a sharp voice rang out.

The three Quidditch fans turned their heads to see Pansy standing nearby and looking quite irritated, tapping her foot on the stone floor, her hands on her hips. 

“Yes…?”

“I thought we were going to walk to Charms together?” Pansy said, pointedly.

Millicent quickly rose from the table, murmuring her apologies, and cast one last rueful glance at her unfinished breakfast before she followed Pansy out of the Great Hall. 

“So,” said Regulus, turning back to Draco. “I hear you have your first flying lesson today?”

“Yes, I expect it will be terribly basic and  _ boring _ .”

Draco gave a melodramatic sigh and took a long sip of pumpkin juice, his fingers drumming on the tabletop. Regulus suspected that he was trying to feign his nonchalance, trying to appear unexcited by the prospect of flying and, perhaps, the prospect of showing off in front of the muggle-born students who had never seen a broomstick before. 

“Still, I’m sure you’re looking forward to getting into the air again. Do you fly much at home?”

“Now and then,” Draco shrugged as he pushed a particularly crispy rasher of bacon around his breakfast plate. 

“If I remember correctly, your parents’ back lawn was the perfect place to practice Seeking. All those tall flowers and ornamental hedges made great hiding places for the snitch.”

Draco looked up, surprised. “You’ve been to the Manor?”

“Of course,” said Regulus. “Your mother and I were quite close, once upon a time.”

Narcissa had always been Regulus’s favourite cousin. When they were younger, before she married, she would let Regulus brush her long shimmering hair, or feed him tiny cakes and drink tea from delicate china cups while she told him all the family gossip. He much preferred sitting quietly with Narcissa to getting up to mischief with Sirius and Bellatrix and— and Andromeda.

“Oh. Mother’s never mentioned you.”

“You’ve said,” Regulus said dryly.

He liked to imagine that it was too painful for Narcissa to recall her youngest cousin,  _ sweet Reggie _ , a victim of war, taken from this earth long before his time… but he worried that it was because she knew about his treachery and was furious at him. Had Draco asked her about him in his letters? Told her that he still lingered at Hogwarts, a ghostly fragment of the boy she had once known?

“Mother doesn’t like to fly but Father sometimes joins me for a Seekers’ game,” Draco said, glancing up and down the table before leaning across to whisper. “Our groundskeeper taught me how to dive.”

“That’s nice of him,” Regulus said carefully, appreciative that Draco had confided in him. “I wish I’d had someone to help me practice. I once crashed into your mother’s rose bushes and snapped the tail-end of my Cleansweep. She was furious.”

“A  _ Cleansweep _ ?” Draco scoffed. “What were you doing riding a Cleansweep? I thought you were supposed to be rich.”

Regulus sat up straighter, indignant. “Cleansweep had the best racing broom at the time, I—”

“ _ Everyone  _ knows that Comets are superior. I have a Two-Sixty, Father says it’s the best on the market. Nimbus have brought out a new model this season but I can’t see it catching on - although it’s miles better than a Cleansweep. An old mop would be better than a  _ Cleansweep _ .”

“I have been dead for quite some time, Draco.”

“That doesn’t excuse anything,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. “A Cleansweep. How embarrassing.”

Regulus had considered going down to the grounds that afternoon with the Slytherin first-years to watch their flying class, but it looked quite windy. The last time he had ventured outside during such weather an unexpectedly strong gust had swept him right into the Forbidden Forest and he didn’t want a repeat of  _ that  _ episode. Who could have imagined that the centaurs would be quite so territorial, towards a mere ghost?

He could have strained himself looking out of one of the west windows, but only being able to see dark-robed blurs would be worse than seeing nothing at all. Instead, he waited in the common room and listened patiently as Gemma Farley talked him through her Runes translation, and interjected with a suggestion whenever he thought she needed it.

The first-years came bustling back in just before dinner, all sporting rosy cheeks and windswept hair. Regulus imagined he could smell the outside on them, cold fresh air mixed with the lingering scent of broom polish, freshly-cut grass, the worn leather of his old Seeker gloves…

“Regulus!” 

He blinked and found Draco rushing across the common room towards him, with more colour in his face than Regulus had ever seen.

“Did you have a good lesson?” he asked, more than a little surprised that his cousin had sought him out. 

“It was  _ excellent  _ \- I am by far the best in the year. I knew that I would be, but it’s good to have these things confirmed, don’t you think?”

“Of course,” Regulus said, glancing sideways as a derisive snort came from Blaise’s direction.

“Potter couldn’t help showing off though, arrogant prat.”

“Showing off?” Regulus frowned. “How could he show off - was this not his first time on a broom?”

“Couldn’t be,” said Draco dismissively. “He must have had secret private lessons. Typical Gryffindor, flouting the rules. Anyway, he was showing off, flying up high when Hooch told us not to, but he was  _ caught _ .”

He couldn’t ignore the glee in Draco’s eyes. How quickly this feud - whether imagined, on Draco’s part, or real, it was impossible to tell - seemed to have grown. Regulus was uncomfortably reminded of his own one-sided feud with Harry’s father, seeing the delight Draco was exuding at his enemy being in trouble. 

“McGonagall came  _ storming  _ down from the castle like a— like a  _ harpy  _ on the warpath, yelling  _ HARREH POTTAH! _ —”

Mimicry was clearly not Draco’s strong point, if that poor approximation of Professor McGonagall’s accent was anything to go by. 

“—and Potter was so scared he looked like he might wet himself.  _ I _ wasn’t stupid enough to be caught, obviously.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes. “What were you doing that would entail you being ‘caught’?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” Draco said with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, I expect he will be  _ brutally  _ punished. McGonagall is quite strict, isn’t she? Father says that she doesn’t hold back even with students from her own house. As she should, of course; a competent teacher shouldn’t show favouritism.”

Regulus wondered whether Draco was yet aware of the favouritism that his own head of house often displayed towards his Slytherin students, or whether he was just so used to receiving special treatment on account of his surname that Snape’s bias didn’t register.

“Perhaps he’ll even be  _ expelled _ ,” Draco continued with delight. “Can you imagine? The great Harry Potter, expelled barely a fortnight into term for being a complete and utter  _ idiot _ .”

Regulus indulged Draco as the boy imagined the myriad ways Harry might be punished - expulsion, a month’s isolation in a draughty tower, a test subject for experimental potions, something about Filch’s rusty old chains, a horrifyingly detailed explanation of Azkaban’s cells, detention in the Forbidden Forest - getting more and more ridiculous with each and every suggestion. Crabbe’s stomach, rumbling loudly, was the only thing that halted Draco’s imagination.

“ Fine ,” Draco sighed. “We’ll go to dinner. Perhaps Potter will already have a new scar to add to that stupid one on his forehead that everyone’s obsessed with…”

Regulus left the common room with them, but instead of lurking about the Great Hall to grow ever more despondent that he couldn’t partake in the food, he decided to drift about the corridors to see if he could uncover any gossip about what had happened with Harry Potter.

He decided to try McGonagall’s office first, imagining that she was more likely to administer punishment there than anywhere else. But he was waylaid by Sir Nicholas, who was wearing a beaming smile and his ‘special occasion’ ruff.

“My dear Regulus! Have you heard the news?” he exclaimed. “Gryffindor has a new Seeker - youngest in over a century! I daresay he would have given even you a run for your gold. We’re sure to win the Cup this year!”

“Oh?” Regulus said, frowning. Quidditch trials weren’t due to be held for another week. “And who has been chosen?”

“Why, Harry Potter of course!”

Regulus stared at him in disbelief. Sir Nicholas’s head kept tipping sideways in his exuberance as he explained the entire story to Regulus: how Harry had been  _ nobly defending  _ a fellow Gryffindor from a  _ slimy Slytherin  _ \- “I mean no offence, dear Regulus, you are one of the good ones of course” - and performed the most  _ spectacular aerial feats  _ that McGonagall had seen in years. He eventually zoomed away to spread the good news among the other ghosts and Regulus drifted back to the dungeons in a daze.

He found Draco slouched in his favoured armchair in the common room, his arms crossed tightly across his chest and hands stuffed under his armpits, looking so petulant that his friends had, wisely, given him a wide berth.

Regulus, not so wisely, approached his cousin.

“Draco…”

“What?” he snapped.

“I’ve just heard about what happened during your flying lesson.”

“What, that Potter is an enormous  _ arse _ ?”

“Language, Draco,” Regulus sighed. “No - I heard that you goaded Harry. That you stole a ball that belonged to Neville Longbottom, when the boy had been injured—”

“So what if I did? It was just a joke! Potter didn’t have to get all stupid and— and  _ Gryffindor  _ about it!”

“Draco,” said Regulus softly, glancing around the common room to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Are you aware of what happened to Neville’s parents?”

“Of course I am, I’m not an idiot,” Draco huffed.

He slunk further down in his chair, his shoulders up by his ears, looking utterly pathetic. His feet kicked against the plush rug as he pouted. 

“Then perhaps it would be prudent for you to stop messing around with his belongings. He—”

“Why do you care, anyway?”

Regulus closed his eyes. “Draco…”

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to interfere. You’re just a stupid ghost, too cowardly to pass on.”

“Draco,” Regulus said calmly - that jibe didn’t hurt, couldn’t hurt, because it was the truth. “I care because you are of my blood. You are just as much Black as you are Malfoy. You are family.”

Draco snorted. “As if  _ that  _ means anything to me. Why would I want people knowing I’m related to  _ you _ ? Why would anybody be  _ proud  _ of being a Black? You’re all insane, my mother’s told me all sorts of stories— she’s the only decent one out of the whole lot of you.”

Regulus jerked backwards, blinking, an odd echo of a thump in his chest where his heart had once pulsed. The Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. That was all he had known, as a child; that his blood was old, and pure. The oldest and the purest.  _ Toujours Pur _ . The Blacks were the oldest family and the purest family and anyone else - even the Malfoys - should feel honoured to be in their presence.

It was all nonsense. He knew that now. Blood was no guarantee of intelligence or cunning or strength, any more than the colour of one’s hair. It didn’t  _ mean  _ anything, not really. But he was still proud of it, proud of his family. Proud of his father’s quiet intelligence, his mother’s raw power, his grandfather’s wiles, his uncle’s kindness, his great-aunt’s independence. 

And it still hurt,  deeply  hurt, when someone - especially another family member - threw that back in his face.

Just as Sirius had done. 

Regulus drifted out into the dungeon corridor, barely registering Draco’s lofty declaration that Potter would get his comeuppance sooner rather than later.

As he often did during times of great distress, where his mind was a tangled knot of confusion and upset, Regulus sought Lady Helena high up in her mother’s tower.

It had been an accident, the first time. A day or two after his death Regulus had managed to work himself into such a state of anguish that he had found himself spiralling upwards through the castle, faster and faster, his new ghostly form completely out of his control, until he had reached the lofty rafters of Ravenclaw Tower and startled Lady Helena from her perch.

Her tranquility had calmed him, as it had many times since. It was difficult to remain panicked in the presence of one such as Lady Helena, in her solemn serenity. She had never questioned him about his life or pried him for details of his death, as the other ghosts - and many students - had. Like Regulus, Lady Helena had suffered through an unhappy life. He only hoped that he could find some semblance of peace in the afterlife, as she had.

Lady Helena was tucked away on the sill of a tall arched window decorated with a stained glass story of the stars. Regulus joined her and gazed out at the moon and glittering constellations, grateful that he had been given a clear-skied haunt in which to spend all eternity. A place where he could watch the stars at night and whisper apologies to his ancestors. 

Sirius was always there. The brightest star in the night sky, nipping at Orion’s heels. Their father’s constellation loomed large, Bellatrix at his shoulder, pointing towards Andromeda’s galaxy and, beyond that, the Leo constellation and Regulus’s own faint star.

Lionheart, the Naming Seer had called him. Little King.

What a load of nonsense Divination was.

“You seem troubled,” Lady Helena said, once the night sky had reached its full darkness. “More troubled than is usual, for you.”

Regulus sighed. “My cousin is not what I expected, nor what I hoped.”

“Families have a disagreeable habit of disappointing us.”

He gave a bitter huff of a laugh. “I can’t help but feel as though I’m the one disappointing him.”

“Yes,” Lady Helena murmured. “I know how that feels.”

They stayed at the top of the tower until dawn broke, stretching pink and golden over the horizon, and the castle slowly began to stir to life once more. Regulus left Lady Helena to linger among her mother’s memories and made his slow descent to the dungeons, half-listening to the gossiping portraits as he drifted. 

_ “First-years, caught exploring already, yes…” _

_ “The third-floor corridor? But that’s where—” _

_ “Hush, good Sir! Do not speak of the beast!” _

_ “Harry Potter, a model Gryffindor…” _

Regulus froze and turned to the painting, depicting a group of golden-haired witches in flowing golden robes. They stopped their gossiping when they saw him watching them so he drifted slightly to the side and pretended to inspect a suit of armour while he glanced at them out of the corner of his eye. They soon resumed their chatter and Regulus learned that Harry Potter had been caught sneaking around the corridors in the early hours of the morning with three other Gryffindor first years.

The  _ audacity  _ of the child. 

To have narrowly escaped punishment for his misbehaviour during the Gryffindor and Slytherin flying class— no, not only to have escaped punishment but to have been  _ rewarded  _ for his actions, to have been given a spot on his house’s Quidditch team without even having to try out for it, despite being a first-year and underage, under-qualified… 

Draco was right. Merlin,  _ Snape  _ was right. Potter was arrogant. Potter was just like his father. 

Had James Potter not spent his entire school career bending - blatantly  _ breaking _ – the rules? Had James Potter not been caught cavorting through the corridors at night, breaking into the greenhouses, taking midnight dips in the lake, sneaking through the Forbidden Forest, flying around the top of the Astronomy Tower, treating the castle as though it were his private playground and every other occupant merely a background character to the great epic tale that was James Potter’s life?

Had James Potter not tricked his way onto his Quidditch team, only to be later named Captain? Had James Potter not employed sneaky, underhand tactics while Captain, stopping at nothing to steal the Quidditch Cup from Slytherin? Had James Potter not flouted every single school rule, only to be later named Head Boy? Had James Potter not mocked and teased and duelled Regulus and his friends, only to steal Sirius right from under his nose? Had James Potter not cast just as many curses and hexes as he had, only to be collected by Dumbledore and declared a  _ hero _ , while the cruel Headmaster stood back and watched as his Slytherins faltered and suffered and  _ died _ ?

What folly to imagine James Potter’s spawn would be any different. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: the Gryffindors and Slytherins had their very first flying lesson, and Draco's rivalry with Harry intensified.

Regulus ought to have guessed that Harry Potter would continue the great tradition of his father by flouting the rules at every opportunity, but he didn’t expect it to happen quite so suddenly and quite so _blatantly_. 

The Slytherin common room was awash with chatter about an exceptionally large package that had arrived at breakfast that morning - carried by _six_ owls, no less - and landed right in front of Harry Potter, disturbing the meals of those unfortunate enough to be sitting near him.

Regulus, half-eavesdropping on the gossip around him and half-concentrating on his chess match against Theodore Nott, wondered who on earth could be sending a package of any size and description to Potter. It wasn’t completely unheard of for muggle-born or muggle-raised students to receive parcels from home but it was much less common, especially in their first-year, as their parents tried to work their heads around the wizarding postal system. From what Regulus could remember of what Sirius had tried telling him, it was very different to the muggle one. Something about colourful stickers with the Queen’s immobile face on them. They would have to take a trip to Diagon Alley of course, if they hadn’t purchased their own owl, or—

“It looked like a broomstick.”

“It can’t be a broomstick, he’s a first-year. It’ll be confiscated as soon as he opens it.”

“But it _looked_ like a broomstick!”

“Lots of things look like broomsticks. Maybe it’s a giant di—”

“ _Miles_!” 

“Maybe it’s a rake? Or a mop?”

“He’s not Filch, you moron.”

“Maybe it’s that tall skinny kid from Hufflepuff, whats-his-name…”

“Why in the name of Circe’s arse cheeks would Rupert Horridge be sent to Harry Potter in the _post_?”

“I don’t know - I didn’t do it, did I?”

Of course. Of _course_ it wasn’t a package from his muggle relatives, whoever they were. Of course, Harry Potter’s punishment would naturally involve being gifted a broomstick alongside his position on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The boy had probably written to Comet the very first chance he got, to tell them all about his latest conquest, how he would be the youngest Seeker in over a century. He’d probably be sponsored by them, have his face plastered all over their marketing materials, huge posters in Quality Quidditch Supplies’ shop windows loudly proclaiming _as flown by Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-And-Also-Seeked_!

A hazy image of James Potter floated unbidden to the forefront of Regulus’s mind. Potter was mussing up his ridiculous hair, tossing a snitch up in the air despite the fact that he played Chaser, not Seeker. Showing off. Trying to impress any unfortunate witch that happened to be in the vicinity.

Potter’s son would be exactly the same, and Draco would be furious.

Draco _was_ furious. 

“Bishop to E—” Theodore broke off and turned to look as Draco stormed into the common room, his bodyguards trailing in his wake, his pale face even paler in his rage.

He flung himself into the chair next to Regulus and knocked their table, scattering their chess pieces at random across the board. As they picked themselves up and dusted themselves down - Regulus’s black knight had to help its horse with what looked like a dislocated knee - they began gesticulating quite rudely at their players.

“He’s got a bloody broomstick,” Draco huffed. “A _Nimbus_.”

“Who?” asked Theodore.

“Bloody Potter, who do you think?”

“But that’s not—”

“I know it’s not allowed!” said Draco, kicking his foot against the table leg. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? Potter gets away with everything! It’s not fair!”

“Surely it’ll be confiscated. First-years aren’t allowed brooms. Wait— did you say a Nimbus…?” Theodore said thoughtfully. “How did he afford that? You’ve seen his casual clothes. I assumed the school had paid for all his uniform and supplies - charity, you know?”

“Yes, well. The _school_ probably paid for the broomstick as well. The teachers know all about it. Flitwick sad McGonagall told him. I expect it’s his _reward_ for disrupting our flying lesson.”

Theodore glanced across the table at Regulus. Regulus sighed. Draco really ought to stop bringing up that first flying lesson and realise how lucky he was that _he_ hadn’t been punished, and stop dwelling on how unfair it was that Potter wasn’t punished too. But Regulus couldn’t exactly say anything to Draco without sounding like the absolute worst hypocrite, since he had done little but dwell this past week too.

Draco looked up and misinterpreted their expressions.

“Could you do something, cousin?”

“What?” said Regulus, alarmed.

Draco sat up straighter in his chair. “Could you, I don’t know, complain about it to the teachers? To Dumbledore? Say that— that if Potter is allowed a broomstick, the other first-years should be allowed them as well? That it’s special treatment and unfair on the rest of us?”

“I’m just a ghost, Draco. I don’t exactly have much say in what happens at this school.”

Regulus wondered if he ought to tell Draco the full story, to warn him that Potter’s reward for his misdemeanour wasn’t just a brand new broomstick but also a position on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The position that Draco had coveted for himself, but would have to wait patiently until next year to try and win.

 _Merlin_ , what if Draco did make it onto the Slytherin team? He and Potter would face each other on the pitch. It would be hell.

“I’ll write to Father,” Draco said decisively. “He’s on the Board of Governors, you know. He’ll sort this nonsense out once and for all. Your pawns look rather upset, Theo, you ought to have a word with them.”

“Does anyone _not_ know that Mr Malfoy is on the Board of Governors?” Theodore muttered as Draco flounced off in the direction of the dormitories. 

Draco’s attempts at persuading his father were proving unsuccessful so far, but he rallied himself and announced his intention to try out for the Slytherin team this year regardless. It was only Regulus’s mildly manipulative entreaty that Draco restrain himself from stooping down to the Gryffindors’ level - “honestly, Draco, revenge will be all the sweeter next year when you have your own broom and make it onto the team through pure skill” - that kept him from signing his name on the try-outs list.

Still, he deigned to accompany Regulus to the Quidditch pitch to watch the try-outs. Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode tagged along too - Millicent, because she genuinely enjoyed the game, Pansy, because she genuinely enjoyed gazing at Draco. Regulus shielded himself among the first-years, feeling wary of the slight breeze ruffling the too-large jumper he had worn to his death, and guided them towards a sheltered spot near the bottom of the Slytherin stand. 

They were not the best try-outs he had ever watched. 

Regulus winced almost as much as Pansy did, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as Marcus Flint, their new Captain, ordered the Beaters to pummel the hopeful Chasers with bludger after bludger. Adrian Pucey, Graham Montague, and Cassius Warrington were flying well - all their practice over the summer had clearly paid off - passing the quaffle smoothly between each other, ducking and rolling to avoid the relentless bludgering, scoring goal after goal.

It was unfortunate that Marcus grabbed Lucian Bole’s bat and caused a particularly vicious bludger to strike Cassius’s elbow, sending him toppling down onto the charm-softened grass and shrieking in pain.

“You dickhead! I told you he had an injury!” yelled Graham, pulling his broom level with Marcus’s.

Regulus rushed out onto the pitch where Cassius was curled up, his robes muddied, cradling his elbow.

“What’s the point in playing Beater if you can’t even aim properly?!”

“Shut the hell up, Montague,” Marcus snarled, slapping his Beater’s bat quite menacingly in his palm. “Snape made _me_ Captain, not you. It’s not my fault this prat’s so shit at passing he can’t even avoid a bludger.”

“Boys, enough!” Regulus shouted up at them. “Graham, get down here and help Adrian take Cassius to Madam Pomfrey. Marcus, it’s time to move on to the Seekers - you’ve only got the pitch for the afternoon.”

“Higgs is the only one who bothered to turn up for Seeker,” Marcus yelled back, sticking his fingers up at Graham as he swooped past him to the ground.

“Beaters, then!” Regulus said in frustration before turning back to Cassius. “How much does it hurt?”

“Really bad,” he whimpered.

Millicent was crouched on the ground, staring at the injury with interest - Regulus had been avoiding looking too closely because he was sure he had caught a glimpse of _bone_ sticking out of Cassius’s dark skin - while Draco and Pansy hung back, wearing matched expressions of horror. 

“Graham, help him up,” Regulus instructed. “Adrian, go with them to the Hospital Wing and explain everything to Madam Pomfrey. Stay with him for as long as she’ll let you. Do _not_ antagonise Marcus, do you understand?”

Graham muttered an agreement as he helped Cassius up off the floor. Adrian was apologising relentlessly, telling his friend that he should have intercepted the bludger, as the three third-years hobbled back towards the castle. 

“Millicent, would you mind taking the boys’ brooms back to the changing rooms?” Regulus asked. 

Millicent did not mind in the slightest. She beamed and lifted the broomsticks as though they were as precious as Merlin’s staff, brushing off the bits of grass and mud as she carried them reverently to the changing rooms. 

The remaining hopefuls were fairly subdued. Marcus could not stop berating the poor Slytherins, not even when it started raining heavily, and it showed in the way the hopefuls kept flying into the goal hoops, letting the sodden quaffle slip through their fingers, dropping their bats and aiming the bludgers in the wrong direction.

When Marcus eventually called an end to the session the group of rain-soaked, mud-splattered students shuffled off to the changing rooms with their heads bowed, stiff fingers gripping their broomsticks.

“Well…?” Regulus asked as he ventured over to the Slytherin Captain.

He was wrestling the bludgers back into their chains; Regulus glanced over his shoulder and saw Pansy, her shoulders hunched and arms wrapped tightly around herself, obviously feeling the cold and keen to get out of the rain. She kept shooting glares at Draco, who remained blissfully oblivious, and instead marched forward to shove his hand under Marcus’s nose.

“Draco Malfoy,” he announced proudly. “I’ll be trying out for Seeker next year.”

“Oh yeah?” Marcus grunted, ignoring his hand. “Hope you’re better than a bag of hippogriff shit.”

“I—“ Draco faltered and dropped his hand limply to his side. He looked up at Regulus, his eyes wide.

“They weren’t _that_ bad, Marcus. The third-year Chasers did well, until Cassius’s accident at least…”

“They were shit,” he said decisively as he finally managed to secure the Quidditch balls into their trunk. “I’ll have to cover the open Chaser spot. Bletchley can take my place at the hoops. Derrick and Bole will stay as Beaters, and I’ll have to make do with Higgs as Seeker. Fingers crossed he’ll get knocked out early on so we can call the match off.”

“I’m not sure that those tactics—”

“ _I’m_ the Captain,” said Marcus, scowling at Regulus. “What I say goes. End of.”

Regulus watched him storm off towards the changing rooms and hoped his teammates wouldn’t have to cross his path for a few hours at least. He turned to Draco and Pansy, both rain-soaked and looking rather pathetic, and sighed. 

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get you two back to the castle so you can dry off before dinner.”

The weeks slipped by faster than sand in an hourglass. The Slytherin Quidditch team had their first practice sessions and, Regulus had to admit, Marcus _did_ know what he was talking about even if he was a little brusque in his delivery. He slotted easily into the new Chaser lineup - Cassius had been relegated to substitute, to his dismay - and had them all practising new formations and training hard, hoping they would be able to rack up enough points from scoring goals that it wouldn’t matter if poor Terrence failed to catch the snitch. 

Although Regulus thought that they might have a chance in their first match against Gryffindor in a couple of days’ time. How good could Potter be, in his very first match? He’d only been flying a matter of weeks. He wore _glasses_ , for Merlin’s sake. 

Regulus had been hiding away in the library all evening, trying to compose a letter to the Gringotts goblins instead of thinking about either of the Potters, and trying to avoid the Hallowe’en Feast. It was too noisy, the children would inevitably get over-excited, there were too many foods he couldn’t enjoy any more, _and_ Sir Nicholas would be there in his so-called ‘fancy’ ruff and patterned tights to celebrate his Deathday.

His 499th Deathday, to be exact. Next year’s - his half-millennial - would be unavoidable and Regulus didn’t think he could cope with two years in a row of being forced to endure yet another account of the good Sir’s botched beheading. He never seemed to tire of telling the story, despite his melodramatic sighs whenever an unsuspecting first-year asked, and seemed to embellish his account year after year. Regulus wondered whether Sir Nicholas could even remember the truth of the story.

As he made his way back downstairs Regulus found a rush of students hurrying past. He pressed himself up against the wall, half-sinking through to the classroom beyond, and wondered what could have caused the mingled excitement and panic in their voices.

“Come along now, in an _orderly_ fashion please— Fred, George, don’t you _dare_ think of sneaking off!”

Regulus looked up and saw his favourite Weasley trying to corral the stream of students up the staircase and towards Gryffindor Tower. Percy looked rather harassed, a bead of sweat forming on his brow as he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with one hand and grabbed a wandering student by the back of their robes with the other.

There was a chorus of squeals as Regulus passed through the flow of students towards the prefect.

“Percy,” he called, his voice raised over the tumult. “What on earth is going on? Why aren’t you all at the feast?”

“A troll,” Percy said with a world-weary sigh. “I swear to Merlin, if my brothers have had anything to do with this— Finnigan, _stop_ dawdling! Do you want to be trampled to death?”

“A troll,” Regulus repeated. “There’s a troll, in the castle?”

“Yes, in the dungeons apparently. Professor Quirrell—”

“There’s a troll _in the dungeons_?”

Regulus sped off before Percy could reply. A troll in the dungeons. A troll where the Slytherins lived and studied and slept. And if Percy and the other Gryffindor prefects were hurrying their students back up to the common room—

No, the teachers weren’t that idiotic. They would have kept the Slytherins in the Great Hall, surely? Nobody would be stupid enough to send scores of children into the path of a troll.

As always, Regulus had managed to overestimate the intelligence of the Hogwarts teaching staff. The Great Hall was almost empty, the half-eaten feast discarded on the house tables, pumpkins slowly rotating in the air and grinning bleakly at the handful of teachers frowning at one another near the doorway.

“Where are my Slytherins?” Regulus demanded, his ghostly hands clenched into fists at his side.

Dumbledore looked up at the intrusion. “All students have been sent back to their house quarters—”

“The Slytherin quarters are in the dungeons! I have been informed that there is a _troll_ in the dungeons, is that not correct?”

“It is being dealt with, Mr Black,” said McGonagall. “If you would excuse us, we are trying to work out a plan—”

“This is utterly irresponsible!” Regulus yelped, interrupting her. “I am _sick_ of the casual disregard with which you treat my house, with which you have _always_ treated my house. We Slytherins have always been disposable to you, haven’t we, Dumbledore? A lost cause, isn’t that what you called us during the war? All excepting your precious _Severus_ , of course.

“Forget it,” Regulus huffed, turning his back to those careless, idiotic teachers. “I shall go and check on my children. _Someone_ has to. And by the way, Minerva: half your Gryffindors are itching to go and find that blasted troll. You’d better hope they don’t succeed.”

He sped out of the Great Hall, terrified of what he might find in the dungeons - a mangled corpse, half-devoured limbs, trampled bodies, blood-soaked robes…

But there was no sign of the troll - or anything else, for that matter - and when he entered the common room at a rush it felt like the entire school were swarming towards him. They were all calling his name, firing questions at him, speaking over the top of one another so he couldn’t understand a single word they were saying. 

“All right, all right,” he said loudly, feeling the panic and anger start to dissipate as he assumed responsibility for his Slytherins. “Hold your questions for just a moment, please.”

He drifted upwards towards the ceiling, hovering about a foot off the ground so he might be seen over the heads of all the other Slytherins. Their shouts quietened down to murmurs and whispers, shuffling feet and the crackling of the fireplaces.

“Is everyone here? Have you all been accounted for? Cariad?”

Cariad Yaxley, the Head Girl, stood on a chair in the centre of the room instead of trying to push her way to the front of the crowd.

“The prefects and I were in the process of making a list,” she said, brandishing a sheet of parchment. “If everyone could get back into their year groups…”

Regulus hung back as Cariad and the Slytherin prefects divided the mass of worrying students by year and began making a register of everyone who was there, getting each child to sit on the floor as soon as their name had been written. Regulus searched the group of first-years for his cousin’s white-blonde hair: Draco stood with his arms folded, feigning an air of boredom, but Regulus could see the way his eyes kept darting anxiously towards the common room entrance.

“It’s alright,” Regulus said softly as he drifted over to the first-years. “The troll won’t be able to get inside the common room.”

“I know that,” Draco huffed, though he took a step closer to Regulus.

“Is it true? Is there really a troll?” asked Pansy. “We thought Quirrell might be seeing things again. He’s half-mad.”

“The other teachers seem to think so,” Regulus said. “They’re making preparations to deal with it as we speak - Quirrell might be… odd, but the others are more than equipped to handle a troll, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Draco said quickly. “I could have killed it myself, if the prefects had let me.”

“How would you do it?” asked Pansy, gazing at him adoringly.

Regulus was spared from the gorier details of Draco’s account by Cariad hurrying over, an expression of relief on her face.

“Everyone’s been accounted for,” she said. “We’re all here, apart from Verity Flint. She was in the hospital wing earlier this afternoon, Ruby Starpepper says Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t let her out for the feast.”

“Excellent, thank you, Cariad. I’ll check on Verity and go to the kitchens to see if the elves can rustle up some hot chocolate for everyone. I don’t imagine the younger ones will want to sleep until we have more news.”

By the time he had returned from the kitchens, the students were all helping themselves to mugs of steaming chocolate from four enormous cauldrons. There were leftovers from the Hallowe’en feast plated up on the tables near the bookshelves, which Vincent and Gregory and some of the other hardier students were helping themselves too.

Regulus sat with the second-years and reassured Ruby that her friend was safe in Madam Pomfrey’s care, sleeping soundly through the drama. He kept glancing over to the first-years - most seemed to think it was a very exciting turn of events, but he noticed rigidity of Draco’s shoulders, the way his eyes kept glancing around the room, the way he kept snapping to Pansy that he was fine.

The hot chocolate had all been devoured and some of the younger students were beginning to wilt by the time the common room entrance opened up again. The room turned as one, all alert, to see their head of house standing stiffly by the wall.

“The troll has been dealt with. You may all retire to your dormitories,” Severus said, and turned to leave again.

“Dealt with? What do you mean?”

“Is it dead?”

“Can we see it?”

Severus gave a heavy sigh and raised his hand; the room fell into silence again.

“The troll has been dealt with and that is all you need to know. To _bed_ , all of you. I do not wish to hear that any of you have skipped your classes tomorrow morning.”

Regulus sped over to him before he could leave. “What happened? Why did you let the children come back down here, when you knew there was a troll on the loose?”

“The situation was being handled, Black. And would have been handled a lot quicker were it not for your little outburst.”

“My little— do you not care about these children _at all_?”

Severus gave him a look of utter disdain. 

Regulus closed his eyes and tried to quell his rising anger. “Fine. What happened with the troll?”

“Potter,” Severus said acerbically. 

“Potter? _Harry_ Potter?”

“He and his little friends appear to have succeeded in bringing down a twelve-foot mountain troll, yes.”

“He… they’re not injured?” Regulus asked, stunned.

“By some _miracle,_ they remain unharmed.”

Regulus blinked and stared across the emptying common room. “But… but they’re _first-years_.”

“I am aware,” Severus sneered. “Potter seems to have inherited his father’s dumb luck as well as his arrogance and general disregard for the rules.”

He exited the common room in a whirl of dark fabric and left Regulus to hover, alone, and contemplate how an undersized eleven-year-old could have summoned both the mental and physical strength to take down a fully-grown mountain troll.

Perhaps there was more to the child than met the eye after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to my beta, kuchi, and to inareskai and glisseo for some hilarious suggestions to my question about what a broomstick-shaped package might contain.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Harry received a broomstick and Draco was furious about it; there was a troll in the dungeons and Regulus was furious about it.

Regulus stared at the single candle standing proudly in the middle of the fairy cake on the wooden table before him and sighed. The flame barely flickered in the non-existent breeze of his non-existent breath. He sighed again. 

The Hogwarts house-elves were bustling around him, clattering pots and pans and speaking animatedly to one another. At this late hour, the kitchens weren’t as full as they were during the day - many of the elves were spread throughout the castle, taking the opportunity to clean and tidy and flag up any necessary repairs while the children were safely tucked away in their dormitories. But the kitchens were still busy enough, with elves rushing about keeping the fires lit, washing the dinner dishes, and starting breakfast preparations. 

Or serving the whims of any of the castle’s other inhabitants who might seek their assistance during the Witching Hour. 

“Happy thirty-second birthday, Sirius,” murmured Regulus.

He gestured to the house-elf waiting patiently by his side; the elf leaned forwards and blew out the candle for him.

“Thank you, Kreacher.”

“Kreacher is happy to serve, Master Regulus,” he said, before adding in a mutter, “though Kreacher cannot understand why Master Regulus wishes to celebrate the birth of such a dreadful traitorous brat.”

Regulus slumped forwards and rested his chin on the back of his hands as he stared glumly at the fairy cake. 

He had asked Kreacher to make a lemon cake with raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream, Sirius’s favourite. If he closed his eyes he could almost imagine the tart scent of a lemon plucked straight from the tree in Granny Melania’s orangery, the feel of its waxy puckered skin beneath his fingers. 

Year after year he and Sirius had collected a basket of raspberries from the tall bushes in the garden, the berries’ red juices running down their hands and tickling at their wrists, stuffing more raspberries into their mouths than they did in their basket. 

The two brothers would stand side-by-side in the kitchen at Everleigh, knocking shoulders, waiting impatiently for their grandfather’s elf to finish mixing the ingredients until, finally, they were allowed to wipe the bowl clean with their fingers.

It was odd how a cake always tasted better when you had been allowed to wipe a bowl clean of its batter first. 

And year after year he and Sirius would be dressed in stiff black robes, miniature versions of their father’s and grandfather’s, and allowed -  _ forced _ , in Sirius’s case - to dine with the adults at dinner. After all six courses had been finished the grand birthday cake would be levitated in front of Sirius, the candles making his face glow, making him seem otherworldly. He would lean forwards and blow them all out with a great gust of breath while the adults clapped obligingly and, somehow, Sirius always managed to have room to force down the largest slice. 

Regulus wondered how many of Sirius’s birthday wishes had come true over the years. Sirius had never confided any of them to him -  _ “everyone knows that wishes don’t come true if you tell them, Reg, you idiot”  _ \- but Regulus always imagined they had involved a cauldronful of dung bombs or a get-out-of-detention-free card or the like.

Perhaps, in later years, Sirius had wished for peace. A solution. A way out of their mother’s vice-like grip.

Regulus sniffed. “Be careful what you wish for,” he murmured. 

A life sentence in Azkaban was quite a dramatic way to go about avoiding Walburga Black. But then again, so was death. 

They’d always been a dramatic bunch, hadn’t they? A family prone to melodrama, Aunt Druella used to say, though she was one to talk. 

Regulus gave the cake neither he nor Sirius would be able to taste one last mournful look and departed the kitchens. He floated up through the dimly-lit castle, with only the whispering and snoring of various portraits disturbing the nightly quiet. He passed Mrs Norris, her unsettling yellow eyes hurrying him along, and a couple of Ravenclaw prefects who seemed more interested in each other than in patrolling the corridors. 

Up and up he went, taking the time to traverse the castle’s staircases and corridors as though he were flesh and lacked the ability to just pass through the ceilings because what did he have, if not time? What did either of them have now, if not time?

Eventually, he reached his destination, a small abandoned turret attached to the Divination Tower. Some magical disturbance had destroyed part of its roof and outer wall - an over-zealous student, perhaps: not even the older ghosts could remember the truth of the matter this many centuries on - and various Seers had Divined it too dangerous to repair. A superstition notion, perhaps, but one that each successive headmaster had respected, including Regulus’s great-great-uncle Phineas Nigellus. 

He settled himself onto the windowsill, dangling his feet over the edge. He could remember the bitter cold of the Highlands’ November winds though he could feel them no longer, despite the gusts whipping at his trouser legs and ruffling his hair in a manner he would have found most irritating while he had been alive. It looked to be a cold night with not a single cloud marring the indigo skies. There would be frost on the ground, come morning.

He gazed towards the south, trying not to look at the lake, and found his brother’s twinkling star. Had Sirius been locked away in one of the outer cells of Azkaban, with a view of the night skies? Could he see his own star from his cell - was he looking now, as Regulus was? Was he even aware that it was his birthday or had he lost track of time, lost his mind entirely?

It had been ten years and a day since Sirius had been locked away. He had endured longer under Mother’s tyranny in Grimmauld Place but a decade was a long time to spend in a single cell with only a dementor for company.

A voice in his head that sounded very much like Sirius said there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a dementor and Walburga Black. 

Regulus reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellowing piece of parchment. He unfolded it carefully, its crease marks beginning to tear after so many years, an ache in his hollow chest growing more painful with each word he read. 

_ LIFE IN AZKABAN FOR MASS-MURDERER SIRIUS BLACK! _

_ Sirius Black, 21, has today been sentenced to life in Azkaban for the murder of Peter Pettigrew, also 21, and twelve unnamed muggles.  _

_ Reporters heard how Black had pursued his former schoolfriend and cornered him on a crowded street in a muggle area of North London. Witnesses described Pettigrew as “distraught” as he accused Black of betraying James and Lily Potter [for more on the Potters’ heroic deaths, see page 7], while Black “laughed like a maniac” before blowing up the entire street with a blasting curse. _

_ Black, who appeared to have been under the influence of illicit substances at the time of the murder and was described as appearing “unhinged”, inflicted fatal injuries on Pettigrew and twelve muggle bystanders.  _

_ Emergency responders from St Mungo’s, the Auror Division and the Obliviator Headquarters rushed to the scene but, horrifically, Black’s curse was so powerful that the only remaining identifiable part of Pettigrew was his right index finger. _

_ Sources say that Black had a tumultuous childhood and was disowned by his parents after running away from home at the age of fifteen. _

_ Black had previously been brought before the Courts for two breaches of the Statute of Secrecy. _

_ Pettigrew’s mother, Edith, said: “My Petey didn’t deserve this. Sirius was his friend, he shared a room with him for seven years at Hogwarts, he’s eaten at my table - that monster deserves to spend the rest of his life locked away, thinking about what he’s done. _

_ “It’s been just me and Petey since his dad died. We were such a close family. He was the best son a mother could have ever asked for. He was gentle, caring, loving. He always tried to do the right thing. He was a true Gryffindor, until the very end.” _

_ Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, said: “Sirius Black is a dangerous individual who has robbed a young man of a future and a mother of her precious son. This was a vicious and unprovoked attack: I would like to thank our officers for apprehending Black so quickly and working to keep our communities safe. _

_ “We will continue to work relentlessly to identify and pursue all remaining Death Eaters. We ask the public to remain vigilant and to contact the DMLE immediately upon encountering any suspicious behaviour or suspected criminality.” _

_ For more information on how to keep your family safe, turn to page 13. For opinion on Black’s sanity, including testimony from his former classmates, see page 22.  _

Regulus curled his fingers around the hem of his jumper and looked up to his brother’s twinkling star. 

“Why did you do it?” he asked, his voice choked. “You had everything.  _ Everything _ . Was it not enough for you to abandon one brother? You had to betray a second, too?”

If the star could hear him, it didn’t show it. Sirius shone on, its radiance brighter than all the other stars put together. 

The first Quidditch match of the year - Slytherin against Gryffindor - took place a few days after Sirius’s birthday. Regulus could remember how his own first match had fallen  _ on  _ Sirius’s birthday; oh how the Fates must have laughed that day. His gut still twisted with shame as he recalled how he had caught the snitch but lost the game because he had been too stupid to keep track of the score, too wrapped up in trying to impress his far more impressive older brother. 

Regulus massaged his temples and tried to ignore Draco’s brash voice loudly complaining about the injustice of Harry Potter being named Gryffindor Seeker. 

“It’s very unfair,” Pansy said sympathetically. 

“It’s more than unfair,” Draco sniffed. “It’s  _ unlawful _ . Potter’s a scrawny, runty, pathetic little brat - if I’m not allowed on the team, with all my skill, why should  _ he _ ? It’s favouritism, yet again. The whole world dazzled by Potter’s  _ celebrity  _ and apparently no one can see through it but me.”

Draco was being so irritating about this Quidditch match that Regulus had half a mind not to watch it at all, to hide away in a forgotten nook instead. He glanced down the table and caught sight of Cassius Warrington staring glumly into his porridge, a stark contrast to the other third-years talking intently to one another around him. Regulus cursed himself for not paying more attention.

Cassius had been dropped from the Slytherin team after their try-out session - after Marcus Flint had exacerbated the injury that Cassius had received over the summer. There was always the chance that he would make it back onto the team next term, but Regulus had to admit that it was difficult to change Marcus’s mind once it had been made up and, besides, it was still upsetting to hear your friends’ excitable chatter about tactics and formations when you could no longer participate in them.

Regulus left the first-years to Draco’s complaints and drifted down towards Cassius. He was sitting slightly apart from the others - his friends Graham and Adrian were deep into a tactical discussion with Marcus - with his head resting on his fist, dragging his spoon dispiritedly around his bowl.

“Not hungry this morning?” asked Regulus.

Cassius shrugged. “No point in breakfast. Not like I’ll need the energy.”

“You’ll need  _ some  _ energy to cheer your housemates on. Have you heard Georgia’s new chant? A little racier than they were in my day…”

He trailed off. Cassius looked glummer than ever, his brows furrowed and mouth twisted downwards. 

“Were you ever dropped from the team?” he asked.

Regulus glanced away, embarrassed. “There were times when I wished I  _ had  _ been,” he said, giving Cassius a quick smile. 

Cassius frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say that the rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor was even more intense than it is now, and… well, my brother was a Gryffindor.”

“Was he on the team?”

“He was a reserve Beater, played whenever he could be bothered to get out of bed on time, but his— his  _ friend  _ was Captain.”

“Yeah, well,” Cassius said morosely, letting a lump of cold porridge slide off his spoon back into the bowl. “I don’t have any rivalries. I just want to play Quidditch with my mates.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure they’d want to see you there, though. Cheering them on from the stands.”

They both glanced up the table to see Marcus using the salt and pepper pots to illustrate a formation while Adrian and Graham watched on, faces serious, nodding intently. 

“I dunno,” shrugged Cassius. “They seem pretty busy.”

Cassius must have been more committed to the age-old rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor than he liked to let on, because he managed to drag himself down to the Quidditch stands and settle himself down in a sheltered corner next to Regulus, his dark cloak and green and silver striped scarf wrapped tightly around him.

The game got off to an interesting start. Marcus’s captaincy had brought out a vicious streak in the rest of his team and Regulus was dismayed at their unsportsmanlike behaviour - sneaky tactics were one thing, but deliberate obstruction and backhanded bludgers were another. He resolved to have a quiet word with Marcus, though he didn’t know what good it would do. The fifth-year was as stubborn as anything. 

The two teams’ Chasers were evenly-matched. More evenly-matched than Regulus thought they would be, considering the hasty reshuffle of the Slytherin Chasers. He chewed his lip and clenched his fists as the Gryffindor Keeper blocked shot after shot, as the Slytherin Beaters did the same, the quaffle flung from one end of the pitch to the next almost too quickly to keep track of. 

But old Seeker habits die hard and Regulus couldn’t stop himself from scanning the field for a glimpse of gold. Harry Potter, to Regulus’s surprise, seemed to have spotted the snitch only moments after he had. Harry pressed himself flat against his broomstick as he dived down - “come  _ on _ , Terrence!” Regulus urged Harry’s Slytherin counterpart - and Salazar, that Nimbus was fast. He rose to his feet, sure Harry would catch it, sure Slytherin would lose the match embarrassingly early, but Marcus hurtled across the pitch and slammed himself into Harry.

Regulus groaned and slumped back into his seat: a foul. A free shot for Gryffindor. Ten points, thrown away. At least Harry hadn’t caught the snitch. 

But then something strange seemed to happen to the Nimbus. At first, Regulus rolled his eyes and muttered along with the Slytherin third-years when they complained about the dangers of letting an eleven-year-old child play in a serious Quidditch match. It appeared that Harry couldn’t control his broom, after all: it was jerking about, lurching this way and that, as though the boy didn’t know how to handle it properly. 

“I thought he was supposed to be good?” said Cassius, frowning.

“So I heard.”

Regulus watched Harry closely. Perhaps it was the broomstick’s fault? The Nimbus 2000 was a brand-new model, after all, perhaps it hadn’t been tested in the field enough - perhaps Draco was right when he said that Nimbuses were inferior brooms. But surely it would have been through vigorous testing before being given to  _ Harry Potter _ , of all people… surely it shouldn’t be behaving like  _ this _ . 

It was then that he remembered, with a jolt, that Harry was just a child. A child, fifty feet above the ground, struggling to maintain his grip on a broomstick that was intent on throwing him off. Regulus stood, his eyes wide, wondering why nobody seemed to be doing anything. 

Harry’s teammates were flying alongside him and below him, presumably trying to pull him onto one of their own brooms or catch him should he fall. Regulus looked over to the teachers’ stand - there was some sort of altercation, he couldn’t make it out from this distance - and when he looked back to Harry the boy had managed to remount his broom. 

Regulus watched warily - he didn’t trust the broom not to suddenly start bucking again - and sat back down. He almost immediately leapt right back up again because Harry was diving, speeding towards the ground, going far too fast - was it the broom again? - and it looked as though he was going to crash or be sick or both.

He’d done it. Harry had, somehow, caught the snitch. He’d coughed it up and - disgustingly - was holding it aloft for all to see. 

“Cheat!” cried Draco, his voice loud over the sounds of the Slytherins’ boos and groans. “He had that snitch in his mouth the entire game!”

Regulus narrowed his eyes and searched the skies above the Quidditch pitch. He couldn’t spot a glimpse of gold anywhere but in Harry’s hand. That’s not to say he  _ hadn’t  _ cheated, but Draco was prone to exaggeration. And it was hardly as though Harry could have survived that broomstick nonsense with a snitch in his mouth and not choked to death. 

He stayed to watch the Gryffindors celebrate, the Weasley terrors raising Harry onto their shoulders, Harry grinning broadly and brandishing the snitch in the air, its wings fluttering weakly between his gloved fingers. 

Regulus could remember that feeling vividly, the joy of victory. He remembered the feeling of loss, too - and as his eyes swept over the Quidditch pitch and found Marcus gesturing angrily at Madam Hooch, and Terrence Higgs walking dejectedly back towards the changing rooms, he knew he was in for a long night with a common room full of bitter and disappointed Slytherins. 

November rolled on. The frosts grew colder each morning and took longer to thaw under the weak winter sun. The elves were working overtime to keep the chill away from the castle with blazing fires and extra blankets in the dormitories. Regulus kept inside, away from draughty windows, more out of habit than anything else. 

“Ah, Regulus; you  _ are  _ a tricky one to track down.”

He looked up from his usual perch on the tall rafters of one of the upper-floor corridors and saw Sir Nicholas’s half-decapitated head emerging from the ceiling. His body followed, his hands holding his head onto his neck, and he took a seat beside Regulus. 

“Our esteemed Professor Quirrell is looking for you.”

“He is?” Regulus said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Whatever for?”

“Oh, something about catching up on your schooldays. A pleasant way to pass the time, don’t you think? Of course, I haven’t seen any of my old schoolfellows in centuries…”

Sir Nicholas trailed off, sighing wistfully as he gazed down the corridor at the handful of groups of students milling about. 

_ Catching up on your schooldays _ . Regulus frowned: what an odd suggestion. He and Quirrell had been at Hogwarts together as students, but Quirrell had been a year or two below Regulus -  _ and  _ in a different house, Ravenclaw if he recalled correctly - and they had barely interacted save for a detention Regulus had once handed him for trying to sneak into the castle grounds at night. 

He couldn’t possibly want to talk about  _ that _ , could he?

From what he knew of the man - the Slytherins’ dismissive comments about his Defence teaching and a few, very brief, visits Regulus had made to the Muggle Studies classes he used to teach - he didn’t seem the type to want to bring up a grudge from over a decade ago. He didn’t seem the type to enjoy  _ confrontation _ .

Perhaps he had gotten Regulus mixed up with someone else. It had happened before. 

“Anyway,” said Sir Nicholas, rising once more, “Quirrell is in his office, should you wish to reminisce. Good day, Regulus.”

Sir Nicholas tipped his plumed hat - almost knocking his head off his shoulders again - and drifted down to mingle among the students, greeting each one with a cheery wave as he passed.

Regulus rolled his shoulders and tucked his book back into its little nook where the wooden rafters met the ceiling, where only he and the spiders could reach it, and thought he might as well go and see what Quirrell wanted with him. Sir Nicholas was half-right - it was a way to pass the time, whether it turned out to be pleasant or not. 

Regulus had only visited the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom once this term, and he was horrified to find that it still smelt as strongly of garlic as it had in September. He dreaded to think how pungent it must smell to the poor students, with their fully-working olfactory senses - it was bad enough to him, a ghost, who normally struggled to smell anything that wasn’t at least half-rotten.

How were those poor children expected to learn anything when assaulted with this stench? Draco ought to be writing home to Lucius about this ridiculousness instead of bothering him with petty schoolboy squabbles.

Quirrell was at the back of the classroom, twisting his hands behind his back as he stared at a botanical poster hanging on the wall. Regulus drifted closer and cleared his throat. 

The professor flinched and let out a high-pitched shriek, his hand pressed against his heart as he turned around.

“R-r-regulus, you s-scared me,” he stuttered.

“I’m sorry,” said Regulus, backing away slightly, “I thought you were expecting me. Sir Nicholas said you wished to see me?”

“Y-yes, of course… p-p-please, take a s-seat?”

He followed Quirrell - who kept glancing over his shoulder as though he expected Regulus to do something terrible and terrifying at any moment - to the other side of the classroom and took a seat across the desk from him. It was piled high with stacks of worn and battered books, sheets of parchment with notes scribbled in minuscule handwriting, dried flowers and the ubiquitous strings of garlic.

“T-t-tea?”

Regulus raised an eyebrow. The man had gone quite mad. Hadn’t he realised he was a ghost? 

“I’m not much of a tea drinker, these days.”

“Of c-course! S-s-silly me,” said Quirrell, letting out a high-pitched, slightly hysterical giggle. He poured himself a cup, his wand-hand trembling as he directed the teapot, spilling a little onto his saucer.

Regulus waited patiently as Quirrell took a noisy slurp of his tea and settled the cup back down on its saucers with a clatter. The corner of his mouth twitched as he considered what Granny Melania would have had to say about that sort of uncouth behaviour. 

“W-what was it l-like?” asked Quirrell, after an awkward and protracted silence. “To d-d-die?”

He stared at him, dumbfounded. Quirrell was blinking into his teacup, unable to meet his gaze. 

“D-did it h-hurt?”

A strangled noise came from Regulus’s throat and he raised his hand to it, fingers tracing over the silvery scars that disfigured his once-warm skin.

The poets said that death was sweet. They were wrong. Death was rotten. Death was agony. Death had been fire in his throat and water in his lungs, burning him, choking him, forcing him to beg for release.

Sharp fingernails clawing at his clothes, hair, skin. Scratching, grasping, pulling him down down down.

“The D-dark… Y-you…”

Quirrell squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as though trying to dispel a bad thought from his head. 

“I n-need your h-help, the s-stone—”

“I’m sorry,” Regulus said abruptly, rising from his chair. “I— I have to go.”

“Wait!” Quirrell stood with a clatter and darted around the desk towards Regulus. He reached out his hand as if to grab Regulus’s arm, before thinking better of it. “Y-you… I know y-you have… I know you w-were a f-f-follower.”

Regulus stood stock still, feeling like he had been petrified.

Quirrell leaned closer, his eyes wide and watery, his voice a weedy whisper. “H-help me b-bring him b-b-back.”

Regulus jerked himself away and fled the room. He hurtled across corridors, through walls, through classrooms, heedless of the shrieks of people he passed through, not caring about the disruption he caused. Faster and faster he flew until he came to a careening halt at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. 

He stared into the shadows between the trees and wondered if there was some creature residing there, deep in the forest, that might be able to eat ghosts.

Was Quirrell… was he trying to restore the Dark Lord to life? Did he think that Regulus would be willing to help?

He sank down into the grass, leaning his back against a tree trunk. The inferi were clawing at his back, his limbs, his throat. The lake water was pouring into his mouth as he screamed, drowning his lungs yet doing nothing to quench the fire coursing through his body. His mind was filled with nightmarish visions of the Dark Lord cursing him, Mother cursing him,  _ Sirius  _ cursing him - he knew it was that potion, Kreacher had warned him about the potion, but what if it wasn’t?

He’d only wanted to make them happy. He’d only wanted a bit of peace. All he had done was make it worse, for all of them.

_ The Dark Lord is dead.  _

Regulus hugged his knees tightly to his chest and bowed his head, repeating to himself over and over:  _ the Dark Lord is dead. _

He’d done it. He’d retrieved the locket and, under his instructions, Kreacher had destroyed it and the piece of soul that had resided within. The Dark Lord had been made mortal again. And then, somehow, the infant Harry Potter had killed him, defeated him. For good.

But Quirrell… ought he go to Dumbledore? To warn him? He wouldn’t understand - had never understood. If only there were—

_ “Snape,”  _ he whispered.

Regulus sped back to the castle and straight into Severus’s private quarters, not bothering to knock or call out a warning.

“I need to talk to you,” he said urgently.

Severus was at his workbench, holding lengths of some dark, stringy-looking roots up to the light of a levitated candle. There was a cauldron next to him sat atop a deep purple flame, the potion inside it bubbling and spitting.

“I’m busy.”

Regulus floated right through the table and set himself directly in front of Severus; the man sighed and fixed Regulus with a glare.

“Severus…” he said, hesitantly, “have you spoken with Quirrell?”

“Only when strictly necessary,” he sneered.

Severus moved along to the cauldron and dropped the roots in, one at a time. The cauldron hissed loudly and golden sparks shot up from the bubbling potion within. 

“Has he ever spoken to you about… the Dark Lord?”

Severus turned, slowly, to face Regulus, his face as still and pale as though it had been carved from marble.

“Why,” he said, his voice low and dangerous, “do you think he would want to talk with me about such a thing?”

Regulus buried his fists in his sleeves, rubbing his thumbs over his knuckles, and glanced around the room. The glass jars lining the walls glinted and sparkled in the light from the floating candles, the contents within them seeming all the more shadowy and mysterious. Severus had always been good at potions. A prodigy, both Professor Slughorn and the Dark Lord had called him.  _ A prodigy _ . Had Severus been the one to create that nightmarish potion he had consumed in the cave?

“It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly, blinking. “I was just— it’s nothing.”

He fled the dungeons before Severus could question him further. He shouldn’t have said anything. He was an idiot. What if Severus knew what Regulus had done? What if he wasn’t on Dumbledore’s side, as he proclaimed to be? What if Quirrell and Severus were working together, what if they managed to resurrect the Dark Lord, what if Severus told him what Regulus had done? What if— Regulus was dead, he was a ghost, he was well aware of that, but… when had death ever stopped the Dark Lord? He would find a way. If he wanted to punish Regulus, to  _ hurt  _ Regulus, he would find a way.

He pulled up his sleeve and stared at the hateful Mark. It had faded after his death and faded yet further still after the Dark Lord’s death, but it was still visible, still there. It would always be there. He would never escape it. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Regulus celebrated a birthday, Harry was good at Quidditch, and Quirrell had a proposition.

Regulus had barely managed to make it into the common room before he was set upon by Theodore Nott, who leapt up and brandished a bright white envelope under his nose. 

“Regulus - there’s a letter here for you!” 

“Thank you, Theodore,” he said, accepting the letter. 

It felt heavy in his hand: a rough, textured envelope, very different to the smooth yellowing parchment he was used to. His name was scrawled across the front in thick, shimmering silver ink.

“It didn’t come by owl, it just sort of zoomed out of the fireplace,” explained Daphne Greengrass, who had been sharing a Herbology textbook with Theodore in front of said fireplace.

Regulus nodded. That confirmed his suspicions; the Gringotts goblins tended to avoid owls whenever possible, preferring to send their correspondence by floo.

“Is that the Gringotts crest?” asked Theodore.

“It is.”

Regulus flipped the envelope over and narrowed his eyes. The seal remained unbroken but the edges of the closed flap were raised slightly, as though it had been tampered with.

“Blaise tried to open it—”

“ _ Daph _ !” 

“You three are too curious for your own good,” Regulus gently chided them. “You oughtn’t go interfering in other people’s private business. You don’t know what you might find.”

Theodore and Daphne gave him sheepish smiles but Blaise Zabini stared back at him defiantly.

“I was only checking it was genuine,” he said, tilting his chin up. “It seemed odd for a ghost to be receiving letters.”

“Even we spirits have the desire to communicate from time to time, Blaise.”

Blaise folded his arms and nodded his head in the direction of the letter. “What do you  _ desire to communicate  _ with Gringotts for?”

“Is it about my inheritance?”

Regulus turned at the interruption and found Draco stood at his elbow, gazing quite eagerly at the Gringotts letter in his hand. 

“Your what, Draco?”

“My inheritance, all your stuff,” Draco said flippantly, waving his hand about. “I’ve been looking into it - hereditary matters, you know - since you said that we were related, and—”

“Have you, now,” Regulus said coolly. 

“Yes, and since you died, and your mother died, and basically everyone else in your family died, and my Aunt Bellatrix is— well, you know where she is… then it all comes down to me, doesn’t it?”

Regulus blinked. He hadn’t even considered that  Draco  might be the one now in control of his vault - Draco was a  _ child _ . Surely even the goblins had a distinction between childhood and adulthood? 

“You were rich, weren’t you?” Draco continued. “How rich, exactly? Are there properties, too? Mother mentioned a London townhouse…?”

Regulus’s throat felt unbearably tight and constricted. The thought that Narcissa might have spoken, so callously, with Draco about their family’s wealth, about a potential  inheritance , but had failed to mention a single thing about him, about Regulus as a person, as a human being with interests and tastes and  _ feelings _ …

Had Lucius corrupted her, too? She and Draco both had Black blood, yes, but they were Malfoys in name. And they had appeared to have developed all the worst Malfoy qualities, including a grasping desire for wealth. It was gauche. Inelegant.  Tacky . He loathed the thought of a spoilt, vulgar child living in his family home, the ancestral seat of the Blacks, squandering his riches, accumulated over so many centuries… 

Bellatrix was a better alternative to that. Merlin,  _ Sirius  _ was a better alternative. 

“Well?”

“We’ll see, Draco,” Regulus said stiffly. 

He left the common room with his Gringotts letter clutched tightly in his fist and made his way to the safety of the old Alchemy professor’s office that he had adopted for his own - nobody else, apart from the spiders, seemed interested in it. He settled down in the moth-eaten desk chair and opened the white envelope with a trembling hand. 

It didn’t take long for him to read the brief response:

_ Ownership matters must be discussed in person. _

_ FORTIVS QVO FIDELIVS _

Regulus huffed and tossed the letter aside. 

In person - that wasn’t  _ fair _ . He couldn’t get to Gringotts in person. He didn’t even have a person any more, he was just a stupid bloody ghost. And he wasn’t about to send a Malfoy in his— wait a minute. Could Kreacher go?

The old house-elf would surely be a Gringotts-approved representative. He’d been in the family for generations, had practically raised Regulus. He’d accompanied Regulus’s own father on many a trip to Gringotts in the past. 

Kreacher, unfortunately, wasn’t too enamoured with the idea. 

“Kreacher doesn’t understand why Master Regulus is so keen to go meddling around in goblin matters,” he muttered while vigorously scrubbing a copper saucepan large enough for him to have slept in. 

“I recently came to the realisation,” Regulus said quietly, glancing around to ensure none of the other elves were eavesdropping on their conversation, “that I don’t actually know if I still have access to my vault. To the…  _ documents _ inside it.”

Kreacher kept scrubbing.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Gringotts was broken into over the summer, and—”

“Nasty little goblins aren’t so clever after all,” Kreacher sneered.

“Yes, well, it got me thinking about whether  my  vault was secure, or if it has been passed down to anyone else in the family. Kreacher, I need to know if Bellatrix could access it, or—”

“Missy Bella was locked away!” Kreacher cried, dropping his scrubbing brush with a clatter. “A terrible crime! Sweet Missy Bella was always so good to Kreacher, always bringing Kreacher treats, Kreacher worries, Master Regulus, Kreacher worries about Missy Bella locked away in that dreadful place!” 

“No, Kreacher, hush,” Regulus said desperately. “It’s not— Bellatrix did a terrible thing, remember? She isn’t on  our  side, she… if she finds out what I did, she’ll be very angry, remember?”

Kreacher nodded slowly, though his round eyes were narrowed and he looked quite suspicious.

“Bellatrix can’t find out, Kreacher. No one can - you didn’t ever tell Mother, did you?”

Kreacher shook his head, his chin wobbling. “Mistress Walburga was the best witch Kreacher ever knew, so strong, so powerful, so noble—”

“Yes, yes, gone before her time, we all miss her terribly,” Regulus sighed, brushing a hand through his hair. “But will you go, Kreacher? To Gringotts, for me?”

“If that is what Master Regulus wishes Kreacher to do,” he said, wiping away a tear. 

Regulus nodded. “It is, Kreacher, I…” he glanced over his shoulder and crouched down on the floor, pulling Kreacher with him, so they might have more privacy. “I’m concerned, Kreacher. Professor Quirrell—”

“Horrible stinking halfwit,” Kreacher spat, wrinkling his long nose.

“Yes, him. He asked me some rather disturbing things. About— about the Dark Lord. You did destroy the locket, didn’t you?” Regulus whispered.

Kreacher pulled his arm away from Regulus and stood up straight, frowning. “Kreacher would never lie to Master Regulus. Kreacher has  _ never  _ disobeyed Master Regulus’s orders. Even when it meant— even—”

His chin began wobbling again, his eyes filling with fresh tears. Regulus grasped his shoulders and tried to comfort him. 

“I’m sorry, Kreacher, I didn’t mean to suggest that you would disobey me, I just— I just wanted to be sure that it was destroyed, that the Dark Lord… that he wouldn’t be able to return…”

Kreacher sniffed and wiped his nose on the edge of his tea towel.

“I’m just so  _ worried _ , Kreacher,” Regulus admitted. 

“Kreacher will go to Gringotts,” he said, determinedly. “And Master Regulus will stop his worrying and be getting out of Kreacher’s way or Kreacher will never get this pot clean.”

Regulus couldn’t help but laugh at the way Kreacher gently scolded him as though he were still a child, still getting underfoot in the kitchen while Kreacher was trying to prepare dinner for the family. 

“Alright,” he said, standing and giving Kreacher a fond pat on the shoulder, “I’ll leave you to it. Thank you, Kreacher.”

“Kreacher is happy to serve,” he said, bowing before turning back to his scrubbing. 

The Christmas holidays were upon them before Regulus had even realised. The first snows had fallen, drawing many complaints from the Slytherins whenever they had to leave the relative warmth of the castle to trudge through the grounds to Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures. The classrooms, corridors and common room had all been decorated with lush green boughs of holly and fir, intertwined with gold and silver bells that tinkled merrily whenever anyone walked past them, and the Great Hall was dressed with magnificent Christmas Trees.

They were trying to hide it, but the first-years’ excitement at the prospect of seeing their families for the first time since September was obvious. The common room crackled with energy as students, both young and older, discussed their plans for the winter holidays; their owls were working overtime, carrying even more letters than usual as each Slytherin took the opportunity to remind their parents about gifts they had in mind and ways they wanted to celebrate. 

Unfortunately, Regulus had to tell Draco off more than once for taunting certain students about having to stay at the castle over the winter break because they didn’t have a ‘proper family’ to go home to.

“How would you like it, Draco, if the same thing happened to you?”

“My father would never be stupid enough to get himself  _ killed _ .”

Regulus bit his tongue, restraining himself from making a comment about Lucius being plenty stupid but having the good fortune of being able to claw his way out of any danger with  _ gold _ . 

It felt strange to have a near-empty castle again after the Hogwarts Express had departed. Almost all the students had gone home for the holidays and the house tables in the Great Hall had been replaced with a single one, for all remaining children and staff. 

Regulus avoided the Christmas feast, as he always did. Unsettling memories plagued him more often than usual at this time of year. It wasn’t like the Blacks had ever enjoyed jolly Christmases - far from it - but they had taken a significant turn for the worse after Sirius’s departure one Christmas Eve. That was the last Christmas feast he could properly remember: sat alone, at a gleaming mahogany table, choking down Kreacher’s cooking in between sobs so the poor house-elf wouldn’t be disappointed. 

Each Christmas after that he had been thrust into the spotlight, paraded as the newer, shinier,  _ better  _ heir.

He had thought he had wanted the attention, once. 

“My feet are freezing, Harry! Let’s just go back.”

Regulus stopped dead. He had thought the castle was empty; he had thought he was alone. He  _ should  _ be alone. The handful of students who hadn’t gone home for Christmas should all be soundly asleep in their dormitories, not marauding about a cold, draughty castle. 

“No, Ron! You’ve got to see them! My mum, and dad, and— and all of them!”

Regulus set his letter aside - he had been too lost in his thoughts to compose a proper complaint to the Spirits Division, anyway - and drifted towards the door to investigate the noise. He peered out into the corridor, but it was empty: had he been hearing things? The voices had sounded very much like Harry Potter and his Weasley friend but… Potter’s parents were  _ dead _ , how could he be seeing them, or showing them to the Weasley?

Salazar, either  he  had gone mad or the child had. 

“But it’s so cold! Why don’t we come back tomorrow instead?”

Regulus jumped back with a start. That voice had sounded horribly close, though he still couldn’t see anything. Curiosity piqued - anything to stop those intrusive melancholic thoughts - he drifted sideways along the wall and came to a stop behind a suit of armour. He moved forwards, into the suit, and peeped through the armour’s visor.

“We’re nearly there, Ron, I know it— here!”

Across the corridor, a door opened, apparently by itself. The voices grew fainter - they must have gone inside that classroom, for some reason - and Regulus debated whether to follow them or not.

It didn’t seem as though they had used a disillusionment charm. Regulus had, out of necessity, grown quite good at spotting the telltale hazy outlines of those using the charm, during the war. And besides, Harry Potter was eleven years old and no matter how good he seemed to be at flying, Regulus doubted he would be able to master an OWL-level charm in his first term at Hogwarts.

It could be a cloak. But how on earth had Harry gotten his hands on an invisibility cloak - a Christmas present, perhaps? Or maybe it was one of the Weasleys’… he hadn’t thought that they would be able to afford such a thing, but it  would  explain some of the twins’ shenanigans. 

Invisibility cloaks weren’t  strictly  forbidden, but that didn’t mean that they were allowed. Imagine the chaos if every child had an invisibility cloak. Or every teacher.

Regulus shuddered. 

What were they doing, even if it was beneath the protection of an invisibility cloak? Regulus was sure that Harry had been mistaken, that he wasn’t going to see his parents. Because why in the name of sweet Circe would James bloody Potter be hiding out in an abandoned classroom? Regulus thought that he had become fairly well-acquainted with the castle’s various hiding places during his ghostly wanderings over the years. He didn’t think he could have missed his old nemesis just  _ hanging out  _ in an old classroom.

And on the odd chance that Harry was right, Regulus didn’t particularly fancy coming face to face with Potter again. Not in his current spectral—

Was Potter a ghost?! Oh, the irony. Foolhardy, impetuous,  _ Gryffindor  _ Potter: too weak, too cowardly to pass on to the afterlife, after all. 

Spurred on, Regulus drifted out of the suit of armour and right into the path of Filch’s old cat.

Mrs Norris yowled, leaping into the air at the nasty surprise, and Regulus shrieked in response.

There was the sound of a muffled bang and panicked voices coming from the classroom and Regulus quickly retreated back into the suit of armour. Bloody Mrs Norris, he’d always hated that stupid cat, why couldn’t Filch just get a dog like a normal person? Must be a squib thing. Even Hagrid had a dog, a loyal hound, even if it was a big old slobbering thing.

The cat slunk into the classroom. Regulus watched her tail disappear through the door and a few moments later it opened wider. Loud footsteps echoed on the flagstone floor and Regulus caught sight of two pairs of feet as the boys raced back up the corridor.

He waited for Mrs Norris to be on her way, no doubt to communicate what she had heard to Filch, before he slipped inside the classroom. 

He took in a loud hiss of breath and almost choked as the air had nowhere to go, no lungs to filter it.

Standing in the centre of the room was the most magnificent mirror he had ever seen. It was like nothing he had encountered before, not at Hogwarts or Grimmauld Place or even Grandfather Arcturus’s country house. It was so tall, and so wide, that it must have arrived by some enchantment because there was no way it could have been levitated through the classroom door. 

The mirror hung in an ornate gilded frame, carved with garlands of flowers and foliage twisting between witches and wizards and unusual robes and all manner of creatures, like the sculpted friezes of ancient temples. Regulus stepped closer, mesmerised, as he tried to decipher the inscription engraved across the top of the frame.

And then he caught a glimpse of his reflection. 

His reflection didn’t look like a phantom, but was solid. Still deathly pale - he had always been deathly pale, thanks to his stupid cursed skin that reddened instead of tanning in the sun like his brother’s had - but  _ solid _ . His reflection’s feet weren’t hovering an inch or two above the floor but were planted firmly on the ground. In the mirror, he was wearing clean and neatly-pressed robes, his skin unblemished and unscarred. His hair was shining, his eyes were bright, and he was  _ smiling _ . 

Mother and Father were standing behind him. Orion’s hand was on Regulus’s shoulder, his signet ring gleaming in the soft light. They were both smiling, too. They looked proud - an expression Regulus couldn’t recall ever seeing them wear in life. He glanced behind him, but there was no one there. He felt silly and foolish but raised a ghostly hand to his own shoulder, hoping he might feel the warmth of his father’s hand there.

He couldn’t, of course. 

He swallowed, feeling weak and feverish as he took in the rest of the image in front of him.

Kreacher was there, looking younger and standing more upright than he did these days. His Hogwarts tea towel had gone and he was wearing his old one instead, embroidered with the Black family crest and knotted neatly at his shoulders. He was holding Regulus’s hand, looking up at his dear friend with affection overflowing from his big round eyes. 

Regulus stepped forwards, his trembling hand outstretched to the mirror, because the part of the image that convinced him, more than anything else, that this mirror was the most powerful artefact he had ever come across, was Sirius. 

Sirius was standing next to Regulus - still a head taller, his shoulders still broader - with a casual, easy smile on his face. His hair was curling around his ears and his collar was unbuttoned but Mother and Father didn’t seem to mind, and Sirius didn’t seem to mind Mother’s hand gently smoothing down his hair, either. He looked more relaxed and content than Regulus had ever seen him in Grimmauld Place.

Because they  _ were  _ in Grimmauld Place. Regulus could see the plush green carpet beneath his feet, could almost feel his feet sinking into it. He could see the glimmer of the tapestry’s golden threads behind them, lit up by the candles burning brightly in the chandelier overhead. He could easily imagine the warmth of the fireplace spreading over his skin, the smell of the tallow candles mixed with wood polish and the rich oud and clove scents Walburga had always favoured.

They all looked so happy. They all looked so  normal . Like a proper family, one of those that Regulus had always been jealous of at the train station, had always tried to avoid looking at as he boarded the Hogwarts Express each term. Like a family that he had wished, hoped,  _ prayed  _ for, every single night.

He dropped to his knees, his hand pressed against the cold glass, and sobbed.

Part of him was relieved to find the mirror had gone the next time he sought it out. There was a dangerous, magnetic power around it - he could too easily imagine losing himself in its reflection, losing himself in the dream that the reflection could be real. It reminded him uncomfortably of those terrifying doppelgänger stories Bellatrix would tell him as a child, and he was glad that his ghostly form didn’t rely on sleep because he didn’t think he would be having pleasant dreams.

“A sickle for your thoughts?”

He glanced down and found Lady Helena watching him. They were in her mother’s old quarters, hidden away in a secret part of Ravenclaw Tower. According to Helena, no student had discovered them in the past two centuries; Regulus liked to imagine that  _ he  _ would have found them, had he been made a Ravenclaw. 

How else might his life have changed, if he hadn’t asked -  _ begged  _ \- the Sorting Hat to put him in Slytherin?

He sighed and swooped down from the rafters to sit beside Helena in front of one of the heavy tapestries that lined the walls, dulling the sounds of the wind howling around the tall tower. 

“I saw a mirror,” he said, pulling a cushion onto his lap, “an enchanted mirror.”

“I once knew a queen with an enchanted mirror. No good can ever come of listening to those things.”

“It wasn’t like the ones I had at home, it didn’t tell me to brush my hair or stand up straight,” Regulus explained. “It showed… possibilities.  Past  possibilities. Things that could have been, I suppose.”

“That sounds like a dangerous object,” said Helena, frowning into the fireplace.

“Harry Potter found it.”

“The celebrated child?”

Regulus nodded. “I think he saw his family in it, too.”

Helena hummed thoughtfully and continued gazing into the fireplace. They fell into silence, the crackling and spitting of the burning logs and the creaking of the window panes the only sounds in their little room. 

“His parents died,” Regulus murmured. “In the war, they… the Dark Lord killed them. Two years after I died. I never liked them - I never liked his father, anyway - but I can’t help but wonder if I could have done something, if I had lived. If I could have— could have killed the Dark Lord, first. Before Harry did.”

He let himself fall backwards, looking up to the ceiling rafters, and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The action wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it had been when he was alive.

“I just…” he continued, with a sigh, “nobody else knew about the— the  _ thing _ . If I’d just gotten over myself and  told  someone, maybe it would have prevented a lot of deaths, I don’t know…”

He glanced over at Helena. Her face was unreadable, a frozen mask that even Regulus’s stoic grandfather would have been pushed to find fault with.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling foolish, “I know the war must seem silly and trivial to you. You must have seen so much worse.”

She shifted slightly, tilting her ghostly face towards him, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. 

“It matters not what I think of your war,” she said gently, “only that it has affected you, and this child.”

Regulus’s throat felt tight, constricted. “I’m worried,” he whispered, blinking. “I’m worried that someone is trying to— to resurrect the Dark Lord. I’m worried that perhaps he didn’t die, after all, that he’s just… waiting, somewhere. Perhaps I got it wrong, perhaps he… I don’t know.”

“We spirits cannot intervene in the lives of the living, Regulus.”

He rolled onto his side and looked towards the window. She had always told him that their lives had ended, that they ought to give the living the chance to live their own lives, and he had found it comforting for a time. But what was the point in his continued existence, in his lingering  _ here _ , of all places, if he couldn’t help? What was the point in ghosts at all if they couldn’t  _ do  _ anything?

There was the sound of a muffled bang outside, a flash of purple light that reflected in the room. 

“Fireworks,” he murmured, watching the enormous multicoloured stars exploding in the dark sky. 

Helena drifted towards the window and began singing, softly. 

_ “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?” _

Regulus stayed very still, not wanting to make a single sound in case he broke what felt like an enchantment she was weaving. He didn’t understand half the words she sang, but he could recall the tune and the sentiment - Granny Melania used to sing it to him and Sirius when they were children; she had been a Macmillan before she had become a Black, Scottish like the Ravenclaws.

The fireworks lit up the sky, obscuring the stars and the bright moon with their multicoloured smoke. He supposed he ought to make a resolution; nobody said that ghosts couldn’t participate in New Year’s Eve traditions. 

_ I’ll talk to Harry,  _ he decided. He would talk to Harry and perhaps, one day, he would be able to apologise for the part he played in his parents’ deaths. Perhaps he would be able to ask Harry if he remembered anything that had happened that night - if he remembered anything at all about the Dark Lord. 

_ “For auld lang’s syne, my jo, for auld lang’s syne. We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang’s syne.” _

Helena finished, her cheeks darkening with a ghostly blush. “A modern song, she said apologetically, “but fitting for the occasion, I feel.”

Regulus hid his smile, as he did whenever Lady Helena called something ‘modern’ which had occurred centuries before he had even been born. He wondered whether he would end up doing the same in centuries to come, amusing younger ghosts and students alike with tales of the twentieth century that would seem like ancient history to them.

“Very fitting,” he nodded, rolling back onto his back. “Thank you.”

1992 would be a good year. He would  _ make  _ it a good year. He would forget his ridiculous, childish rivalry with James Potter. He would befriend Harry. He would keep Draco in line. He would figure out whatever Quirrell was plotting, and most of all, he would make sure the Dark Lord remained dead. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as ever to my beta kuchi!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Regulus received a letter from a goblin, found an enchanted mirror, and made a resolution.

“What on  earth  is going on?” Regulus demanded as he zoomed along the corridor towards the trio of boys, still undecided if he was more angry or concerned. “Pansy told me you were in a  fight !”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Draco protested, lifting a hand to press at the tender, freshly-healed skin around his eye. “It was the Gryffindors, they attacked me! Two on one. It was very unfair.”

“Two on one, was it?” Regulus glanced at Vincent and Gregory, who were standing behind Draco wearing rather sheepish expressions, and also sporting facial injuries. “So what happened to you two, then? A stray bludger, I suppose?”

They shrugged, exchanging uneasy looks.

“Weasley is  _ feral _ ,” Draco continued, wincing as he tried to frown. “I suppose it’s to be expected, considering his family, but—”

Regulus interrupted him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He’s a Weasley,” Draco said matter-of-factly. “They’re blood-traitors. And poor. Father says they live in some sort of  _ shack _ . With  _ pigs _ .”

“Draco…” he sighed. “Someone’s family being less wealthy than yours doesn’t give you the right to pick fights with them. The sooner you learn that, the better.”

“I didn’t pick a fight! Weasley’s the one who attacked  me !”

Regulus pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t that he found it hard to believe that a Weasley would start a fight - far from it; most of the Weasleys he had encountered had been just as quick-tempered as his brother had been, and just as eager to make a show of standing up for themselves - but he had known Draco for some months now. And, quite frankly, he was amazed that Draco’s antagonistic and abrasive nature hadn’t gotten him into a fist-fight before now. 

“Regardless,” Regulus said, “you oughtn’t call people ‘blood-traitors’. It’s a ridiculous term, it’s meaningless, and—”

Draco snorted and pushed through him. “What would  you  know, anyway? You’re  _ dead _ . My father says you’re nothing but a confused little boy who got his head turned by his blood-traitor brother and  _ died _ .”

Regulus hovered in stunned silence as the three young Slytherins swaggered down the corridor and disappeared down a flight of stairs. Lucius knew, then, or at least  suspected  what Regulus had done. And if Lucius knew, then surely the Dark Lord knew… and if Quirrell succeeded in resurrecting the Dark Lord…

Perhaps he would repeat whatever sick ritual Quirrell was attempting and resurrect Regulus, too, just so he might have the pleasure of killing him all over again.

“Is everything alright?”

He jolted at the unexpected voice and turned to see Harry Potter’s Weasley friend -  _ Ron _ , he remembered - and the girl with all the hair, standing just behind him. They must have come straight from the Quidditch match, the girl was still wearing her Gryffindor scarf, her eyebrows drawn together in concern. Ron had a few specks of blood - Draco’s blood? - on his jumper but otherwise appeared unharmed. 

Regulus blinked at them.

“You look rather more transparent than ghosts usually do,” the girl explained patiently, gesturing vaguely at him.

Regulus glanced down at himself and saw that he did, in fact, look rather see-through. As he became aware of it, his figure slowly shifted, morphing back into some semblance of solidity. 

“Ah,” he said, embarrassed. “That happens, sometimes, when I… get lost in my thoughts.”

The girl nodded, looking quite solemn, while Ron gave her a bemused look. He stepped to the side as if to walk around him and continue his journey and Regulus reached his hand out towards him.

“Wait!” he said. Ron recoiled, understandably, from Regulus’s icy touch. “I’m sorry, I just… I wanted to apologise, for Draco’s behaviour this afternoon.”

Ron shifted uncomfortably. “It’s fine. It’s not your fault.”

“Still, as his cousin, I feel some level of responsibility for his actions.”

“You’re a  _ Malfoy _ ?”

“Er,” Regulus hesitated, rather concerned at the horror with which Ron was staring at him. “No… my name is Black.”

“Are you related to the Blacks who are in Azkaban?” asked the girl, quite eagerly. “I’ve been reading up,” she added, to Ron’s questioning look, “about— well. The Blacks were followers of You-Know-Who.”

Ron turned back to Regulus, his hands clenched at his sides. “Are  _ you _ ?” he demanded.

“Er—”

“Ron! Hermione!”

Regulus was rescued by the abrupt appearance of Harry Potter, possibly the only person in the castle who could have made this interrogation even more uncomfortable. 

“Where have you been?” asked Hermione, at the same time as Ron yelled, “We won!” and began thumping poor Harry on the back. Harry’s grin slipped away when he spotted Regulus hovering behind his friends; his gaze darted uncertainly between the three of them as he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” said Regulus, feeling awkward. “I… I’ve been meaning to congratulate you, on your Quidditch victories. Your first match - a very well-played game, a most unusual catch.”

Ron narrowed his eyes, his arms folded across his chest, shifting so he was standing slightly in front of Harry. Harry, meanwhile, was staring at his feet, his cheeks tinged pink. Regulus had never seen a Potter look embarrassed before. It was a little unnerving.

“I wasn’t… I didn’t  _ mean  _ to…” Harry mumbled.

“Regardless, you showed great skill in managing to stay mounted while your broom was behaving erratically.”

“Ignore him, he’s related to  _ Malfoy _ ,” Ron said, scowling. “He’s probably trying to trick you into giving up Wood’s training plans or something.”

“I didn’t— that’s not—” Regulus stuttered, appalled, as the three Gryffindors stared at him with varying levels of mistrust. “James was an excellent flyer, too!” he said desperately. 

Harry’s eyes grew wide. “You knew my dad?”

The hope in the boy’s startlingly green eyes would have been heart-breaking if Regulus had still had a heart. He faltered, feeling distressed that Harry sounded so eager, so  _ desperate  _ at the thought of someone having known his father - had none of Potter’s other friends survived the war? Had none of them visited Potter’s son, or written to him?

And what of the teachers who had taught Potter at school and were still here, for their sins - Professor McGonagall had been his head of house, had she not told Harry anything about his father? Perhaps Harry would prefer stories from a peer, not a teacher. Regulus  had  been Potter’s peer, though he doubted Harry wanted to know what a smug, arrogant, self-satisfied pillock his father had been.

“I— I didn’t know him well,” Regulus said, feeling his own shoulders droop just as Harry’s did. “He was friends with my brother.”

“Your brother,” Harry repeated, his voice dull.

“Don’t listen to him,” Ron said. “His family were in with You-Know-Who’s lot. I bet he’s working with Snape.”

“…with Snape?” asked Regulus, bewildered. What could these three children possibly know about  _ Severus’s  _ involvement?

“Snape!” Harry exclaimed, smacking his forehead as though he had just remembered something incredibly important. “I need to tell you something - both of you - about the— the  _ stone _ .”

“What is it?” 

“Not here,” Hermione said, glancing at Regulus. 

The three Gryffindors hurried down the corridor, leaving Regulus hovering alone once more. Harry glanced back over his shoulder just once: Regulus liked to imagine that his expression was one of hope and curiosity, but it was probably just desperation.

What a mess he had made of things  again .

Regulus spent the next few weeks trying to patch things up with Draco. Every time he had tried to convince the boy that it wasn’t fair for him to start fights who those less fortunate than him - especially Neville Longbottom, whom Regulus had discovered had also been involved in the fight,  _ especially  _ considering what Draco’s aunt and uncle had done to Neville’s parents - Draco just scoffed and turned his back on Regulus.

He tried changing tack, tried to convince Draco that he would be the better person if he didn’t ‘retaliate’ in future. He told him that fist-fights were for brash, impetuous Gryffindors, not Slytherins. Not  _ Malfoys.  _ He told him that Slytherins used cunning and guile to outsmart their enemies. Draco seemed to take that on board and Regulus began to feel a little better about the whole situation. 

The feeling didn’t last long.

Draco managed to lose house points  _ and  _ get himself detention by concocting some ridiculous hare-brained plan that seemed to involve luring Harry and his friends to some tower at night in an attempt to land them in trouble. It was a repeat of that ridiculous scheme with the duel last year, and Regulus was  not  impressed. 

“I don’t know how many times I need to warn you about messing around in other people’s business, Draco,” he said, feeling quite exhausted.

Draco merely shrugged and continued to flip through  _ Which Broomstick?  _ magazine, though his nose was stuck so high in the air that Regulus wasn’t entirely sure that he could read the text.

“And now you’ve lost goodness knows how many house points and landed yourself in detention,” Regulus continued.

“So?” Draco said petulantly. “Gryffindor lost more points. And Potter and his stupid little friends are in detention too.”

Regulus sighed. “That’s not the point, Draco, you—”

“No need to get your robes in a twist. Father will sort it out.”

Lucius’s influence wasn’t as far-reaching as Draco liked to think, and the boy had to suffer through the indignity of detention after all. It was held late for a detention; despite his growing frustration and annoyance at his cousin Regulus couldn’t help but worry, and made sure to sit up in the Slytherin common room to await Draco’s return.

There was a stirring from the stairs leading down to the dormitories. Regulus glanced over his shoulder and saw Theodore uncertainly making his way back into the common room. Regulus beckoned him over with an encouraging smile.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Theodore murmured, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders as he settled into a nearby armchair. 

“You haven’t had trouble with your sleep in a while,” said Regulus. “Did you remember to take your valerian draught?”

Theodore nodded, rubbing at his eyes. “It doesn’t seem to be working tonight.”

Regulus hummed. “We’ll go and see Madam Pomfrey in the morning, perhaps she can increase the strength for a little while… is there anything in particular on your mind?”

“Exams, I suppose,” he said quietly as he fiddled with the edges of his blanket.

“You only need to pass, remember; you’re only in your first year. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself.”

Regulus felt like a hypocrite for saying it - after all, had he not been the one to track down a supplier of Baruffio’s Brain Elixir in his own first year? Not that it had done him much good. The trembling in his hands had made it quite difficult to hold his quill and aim his wand, and the examiners had seemed quite disturbed by his unusually rapid speech.

“My father…” Theodore began, frowning at his hands as he trailed off.

“Fathers do tend to have unreasonably high expectations of their sons,” Regulus said quietly. “In my experience, it’s often a result of their own failings in youth.”

Theodore nodded.

“I know it’s hard, but try not to let him get to you. From what I’ve heard you’re doing exceptionally well in your classes - and exams are not always a true representation of one’s abilities, especially in your first year,” Regulus said. “And if your father continues to give you a tough time - well, I have some acquaintances in the area that are always up for a good haunting.”

Theodore snorted and ducked his head, his prominent cheeks betraying the grin he was trying to hide. Regulus felt unusually warm and vowed that he would tear himself away from Hogwarts to haunt Rufus Nott himself if he had to; he knew what it was like to feel uncomfortable in your family home. He knew what it was like to fear your father. No child should have to endure that.

“A game of chess to tire you out?” he suggested. “Namrata tells me you’re getting very good.”

Theodore nodded and hurried to get the common room set from the stack of board games beside the fireplace. As he set up the pieces he told Regulus how Namrata Banerjee, captain of the Slytherin house chess team, had suggested that he might be in with a chance of placing in the top three at Hogwarts’ annual post-exams tournament.

“She said I ought to practice with different sets, so I’m not relying too heavily on my bond with my own pieces when I play,” he explained. 

“Sound advice,” said Regulus. “My uncle once brought back a set from Russia that deliberately tried to trick you into making the wrong moves. The bishop was particularly infuriating, as I remember.”

Their game was disturbed halfway through by Draco bursting through the common room entrance. Regulus and Theodore both looked up, startled; Draco’s eyes were darting around the room, his breathing rapid, shoulders trembling, eyebrows drawn upwards in an expression of panic.

“Draco,” Regulus said, standing. “Is everything alright?”

The boy rushed across the room in a blur and flung himself at Regulus, crying out in alarm as he stumbled right through him.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus apologised - he hadn’t been expecting  _ that  _ \- and held out an arm. “Do you— I mean…”

Draco let out a sob, nodding vigorously, and Regulus concentrated very hard on making himself solid enough to be able to hold. He mouthed an apology to Theodore, who slipped quietly back to the dormitories, and tentatively wrapped his arms around Draco. 

As Draco buried his face in Regulus’s chest he remembered that the boy was, after all, still just a child. It was easy to forget that among all the arrogance and posturing. 

“What happened?” he asked, keeping his voice soft though he felt somewhat alarmed. He hadn’t expected anyone, least of all Draco, to return from a detention acting like  _ this _ .

Draco shook his head and clung on tighter, his fingers curling into the back of Regulus’s jumper. Regulus had barely touched anyone since his death - had barely touched anyone  _ before  _ his death - and never like this. He had once clung to Sirius for comfort but had never expected that one day he would be the comforter. Feeling a little unsure about what he should do, he gently patted the top of Draco’s head. Draco shivered but made no sign of wanting to move away.

“Are you in trouble?”

He was more than worried, now. He had never seen Draco upset like this before: angry, righteous, indignant, yes, but never  _ sobbing _ . This wasn’t how he had reacted when he had gotten himself in trouble before. This wasn’t even how he had reacted when he had been in a fistfight… what on  earth  had happened at that detention?

Draco was still as stone for a moment or two, perhaps considering Regulus’s question, then shook his head with a jerk.

“Alright…” Regulus said, inwardly despairing. “Why don’t we move closer to the fire? You must be very cold.”

He took a step backwards, intending for Draco to follow, but the boy clung onto him and his feet dragged across the carpet. Regulus stopped; he didn’t have the strength or the energy or the bloody  _ corporeality  _ to do this.

“I’m sorry, Draco, I can’t carry you, I—”

“Well what good  _ are  _ you, then?” he burst out, pushing himself away from Regulus and rubbing his tears away with his fists. 

“Draco,” Regulus sighed, “please don’t be angry with me. I’m on your side.”

Draco sniffed and flung himself down on the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest as he frowned furiously into the crackling fireplace. Regulus sat down next to him, cross-legged with his hands in his lap, and waited patiently. 

“I  hate  them,” Draco whined.

“Who?”

“Everyone! McGonagall and that stupid squib, they— they sent me into the Forbidden Forest!”

“ _ That’s  _ where you’ve been?” said Regulus, aghast. “For your detention? In the Forbidden Forest?”

“It’s  _ savage _ ! There are all sorts of— of  _ things  _ living in there, werewolves and—”

“Did you encounter a werewolf? Are you hurt?” Regulus asked quickly, though he knew, logically, there was no chance Draco could have been injured: the moon was waning, tonight. 

“No. There are things  worse  than werewolves in there.”

Regulus braced himself as Draco leaned against him and rested his head on his ghostly shoulder. What could an eleven-year-old boy possibly think was worse than werewolves?

“You’re very cold,” Draco complained.

“That comes with being a ghost, I’m afraid. Did something happen, in the Forest…?”

_ Tell me who - or what - I need to haunt for this. _

“I saw something,” Draco said in a low voice. “I think it was a dementor.”

“Oh. That… that can’t have been pleasant.”

Regulus found it difficult to believe that a dementor could have strayed this far from Azkaban without anyone noticing - of course, a castle full of children would provide plenty for it to feed on, but why would it be skulking around the Forest? It couldn’t have been a dementor. It had probably just been an unfortunately-shaped shadow. 

“It was eating a unicorn.”

Regulus blinked in surprise. “…what?”

“That great big  oaf  of a half-breed wanted us to track down this injured unicorn or something. He made me go with Potter because Longbottom was too  cowardly  but I found it, it was… it was all broken, on the floor, and— its mane was very white…”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“I don’t care!” Draco protested. “I’ve seen dead things before. Loads of them. All the time. I’m not upset!”

Regulus hoped very much that this was just Draco’s usual bragging and that his childhood hadn’t been littered with as much death and destruction as Regulus’s had been. He had hoped that his sacrifice in that dreadful cave would mean that no child would have to live through that, ever again.

“Anyway,” Draco said, “the dementor sort of  slithered  over the unicorn and then it started to eat it.”

“Dementors don’t feed on unicorns,” Regulus frowned.

“This one did.”

“Dementors feed on human souls, living souls, they—”

“I  know  that, I’m not some stupid mudblood, but  _ this  _ one was eating a dead unicorn!”

A cold sort of fear took root inside Regulus’s hollow chest. His fingers tightened around Draco’s shoulder and he tried to think, desperately, about what could possibly want to feed on a unicorn because he was certain it hadn’t been a dementor. It was a terrible, heinous crime, to drink the blood of something so pure - it was something unforgivable, something that  _ changed  _ you. Who would be willing to do that?

Who else had been willing to change themselves, irreversibly, through the most unthinkable acts?

“What did it look like?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady and calm for Draco’s sake.

“What, the dementor? Don’t you know what a dementor looks like?” Draco scoffed, curling up closer to Regulus’s side. “A big black cloak, you know. With the hood drawn up. Very pale hands.”

“Did you see anything else? A face, or…?”

“Dementors have faces? That’s disgusting.”

“Yes,” Regulus said, feeling quite sick. “Very disgusting indeed.”

He waited until Draco had sat up straight again - “stop fussing, cousin, I’m not a  _ baby _ ” - and retired to his dormitory before setting off in the direction of Severus Snape’s private quarters.

He wasn’t sure where else he could go. His last attempt at trying to communicate his fears to Severus hadn’t gone well, but who else was there? Who else had the physicality to actually be able to  _ do  _ something? Who else in the castle knew, first-hand, what the return of the Dark Lord might mean for one of his followers, defected or not?  _ Dead  _ or not?

“R-R-Regulus!”

He halted in his path down the dungeon corridors and turned, alarmed. He hadn’t seen Quirrell, had sped right past him; the man had been standing in the shadows with a dark cloak half-drawn over his bright purple turban.

“I was w-wondering if you had had t-t-time to think about m-my s-s-suggestion,” Quirrell said, drawing closer. He looked feverish, his skin almost luminescent and glowing under a light sheen of sweat.

Regulus couldn’t move. He felt sick. Disgusted. 

“The D-Dark Lord has many p-p-powers,” Quirrell continued, pressing ever closer, “The p-power to bring you b-back to l-l-life.”

“No,” Regulus whispered, backing away as Quirrell advanced. He had witnessed the results of the Dark Lord’s necromantic powers, had died at their hands. He had no desire to join the Dark Lord’s army of inferi.

“You cannot r-refuse him. He will r-r-return.”

“He can’t,” Regulus whispered. “He— he  _ can’t _ .”

Regulus tore himself away and sped down the corridor, in the opposite direction to Severus’s quarters, because what if he couldn’t trust him? What if Severus  wasn’t  loyal to Dumbledore, what if Quirrell had managed to recruit him and they were working together to restore the Dark Lord to power? 

He journeyed up through the castle, his mind whirring, his thoughts and fears tumbling over one another, until he almost unconsciously found himself in the Headmaster’s Tower. 

It was late, but Dumbledore would receive him, he knew. When Regulus had first arrived at Hogwarts as a ghost, Dumbledore had told him that he could go to him at any time. The Headmaster had said that he had many things he wanted to ask of Regulus.

Regulus thought he knew what those things were, and they frightened him.

He hovered in the middle of the corridor, holding a staring match with the ugly great gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Headmaster’s office until dawn broke and the castle began slowly stirring to life. Unwilling to be caught there and questioned before he was ready, Regulus floated up to the rafters and sat in silence, huddled up in a corner with a fat-bellied spider.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed up there. At some point he lost track of the sun’s course, lost track of whether the sky outside the tall leaded windows was blue or grey or black. He stopped paying attention to the students and teachers passing beneath his feet, stopped paying attention to anything but the knot of horror in his stomach.

Eventually the headmaster came down to greet Regulus himself.

“Good evening, Regulus,” Dumbledore said amiably, his head tilted so he could see Regulus, his hands held loosely behind his back.

Regulus stared back down at him, his fear now a swirling, tangled ball in the back of his throat. 

“The Slytherins are concerned about you,” Dumbledore continued. “Miss Yaxley tells me you haven’t been seen in the common room for four days now. The examination period is almost upon us once again.”

_ Examinations _ . Regulus flinched, thinking of Theodore’s sleepless nights spent worrying about his exams. Of Draco’s boasts that he was bound to be top of their year, his faux self-confidence masking his own fears of upsetting his father. He thought of the fifth years, about to endure their first meaningful set of exams, and the seventh years with their all-important NEWTs, their entire futures about to be determined by their memory recall during the course of a single week. 

He had been so selfish, moping up here in the rafters, wasting time when he should have been with his Slytherins. They needed his help and reassurance, not whatever this was. 

He drifted down from his ceiling beam and came to a stop several inches off the ground, so he might look his old headmaster in the eye.

“I…” he began, swallowing his fear. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Something Draco saw, in the Forest.”

“There is no need to worry, Regulus. Professor Snape has already informed me of the situation.”

“Severus— Draco told  _ Severus _ ?”

Dumbledore inclined his head.

Regulus bit back his anger, his  jealousy  that Draco had confided his fears in another - in  _ Severus  _ \- and pressed on. “So you know about— about the thing, that he saw?”

“I do. I have informed the brave witches and wizards who guard Azkaban about their runaway dementor.”

Surely he didn’t  really  believe that? He was - allegedly - the greatest wizard of their time. Surely he could see what Regulus could? That the idea of a dementor in the Forbidden Forest was quite ridiculous?

“Dementors don’t feast on unicorn blood, Headmaster.”

“I’m sure that Draco was mistaken in what he saw. The Forest is a dark place, even in bright sunlight; its shadows often play tricks on us.”

Regulus’s jaw twitched. This was sounding all too familiar: a Slytherin approaching the Headmaster with a problem, the Slytherin’s problems being dismissed as invalid. Unworthy of the attention of the great Albus Dumbledore.

“I think you know who is most likely to have the need and desire to feast on unicorn blood, Dumbledore, just as well as I do,” Regulus said darkly. 

Dumbledore fixed him with a piercing stare. “I appreciate you bringing this matter to me, Regulus. But I assure you that the matter is being dealt with.”

“Like that troll was  _ being dealt with  _ last Hallowe’en? Will you be leaving three eleven-year-olds to deal with the Dark Lord, too?” he scoffed.

“Everything is in hand, Regulus. There is no need to concern yourself. Now, unless you had any other complaints about my running of this school, I had better leave you in peace.”

Regulus thought that not even an eternity would be long enough to catalogue his complaints about Dumbledore’s headship, but he knew a stubborn old man when he saw one. There had been enough of them in his own family. 

No - if Dumbledore could not be swayed, could not be persuaded to  listen , then Regulus would be better off returning to the dungeons to stand watch over his Slytherins because no one else was going to look out for them. He would do his best to keep an eye and an ear out for Quirrell, and Snape, and the Dark Lord too. He would pray that he was wrong and Draco  had  just seen a dementor in the Forest, however unlikely that was. He would pray that Dumbledore knew what he was doing, and hope that all would be well. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, as always, to my beta [kuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuchi/pseuds/kuchi)!
> 
> One more chapter to go (probably), though I'm contemplating stretching this out into a series, we'll see.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Draco had a detention in the Forbidden Forest and Regulus didn't like what he found there.

The entire school was in something of a meltdown for the duration of the examinations period. Regulus witnessed tears and tantrums, eruptions of accidental immature magic and more spontaneous duels over the hoarding of books and class notes than he cared to count. There were long queues outside Madam Pomfrey’s office day and night for sleeping and study aids; teachers, students, and ghosts alike were _exhausted_.

And while the Slytherins might have appeared tenacious and self-confident to the rest of the castle, within the safety of their dungeon walls many fell to pieces, their collective ambition and perfectionism coming to a head. Not for the first time, Regulus wondered if separating children according to their personality traits wasn’t one of the most foolish ideas Wizarding Britain had ever had. 

Regulus spent each night comforting his tearful Slytherins, and each morning insisting that they continue to adhere to basic standards of hygiene.

“But I don’t have time to shower!” wailed Thabo Travers. “I’m drowning in OWL revision!” 

Regulus had to stand guard outside the bathroom door to make sure he didn’t leave without washing. “There is always time for cleanliness!” he insisted. 

Kreacher was instrumental in making sure they were all eating properly, bringing up platters of food and pitchers of juice at all times of the day and night, and also keeping the common room’s supply of spare quills, inks, and parchment well-stocked. Regulus spent most of his time with the fifth- and seventh-years, all of whom - with the exception of a worryingly apathetic Marcus Flint - were particularly frantic distressing over their all-important OWLs and NEWTs.

The whole thing took up so much of his time that he barely had the chance to even think about unicorns or dementors or the Dark Lord.

The night before exams got underway, he had to confiscate a batch of charmed quills from Draco.

“What are these?” Regulus demanded, pointing at the pile of unidentifiable, reddish-purple quills gathered in a heap on the table.

“Memory Quills,” Draco said nonchalantly. “They remember what I’ve written and will reproduce my writing during the exams. I’ve got one for each subject. Good, aren’t they? Mother sent them.”

“Draco, that’s cheating.”

“So?”

Regulus gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t have time to explain the concept of cheating to you right now. I’m taking these away—” 

Draco protested, loudly.

“—you’ll be given an Anti-Cheating Quill to use during each exam so these are pointless, anyway.”

“I bet _Potter_ will get to use his own quill!”

Regulus doubted that but chose to ignore Draco in favour of dumping the so-called Memory Quills into the common room fire.

“My father will hear about this!” Draco yelled, but Regulus couldn’t bring himself to care because three fifth-years were gathering in a suspicious-looking huddle on the other side of the common room.

Regulus drifted over to them, stopping just behind Hector Gamp. None of the three appeared to have noticed his presence; he coughed, and they jumped in unison. Hector hurriedly shoved what looked like three potions phials into the inner pockets of his robes but couldn’t hide the unmistakable noise of glass bottles clanking noisily against each other. 

“What do you have there?” he asked. He was asking that question far too much these days.

“Nothing,” they chorused, plastering their faces with matched expressions of innocence. It might have worked on someone who hadn’t also been a secretive teenaged Slytherin. 

“It didn’t look like nothing to me. Place the potions on the table please, Hector.”

Hector grumbled but pulled the phials out of his robes - ignoring Kimi Hirata’s whispered _“don’t!”_ \- and Regulus inspected them carefully. He wished he was able to uncork them to try to identify their contents by their smell because truthfully, he wasn’t entirely sure what they were. But by the bright green colour of the liquid within and the way the three Slytherins were shifting uncomfortably, he could make a good guess.

“I’m confiscating these,” he said. “Unlabelled, unlicensed - you should all know better.”

“But Georgia told us they were legit, Sir.”

“Don’t think you’ll convince me to turn a blind eye by calling me ‘Sir’, Hector,” said Regulus, trying to look as stern as possible to students who were only a few years younger than he had been when he had died and were already almost as tall as he was. “These sorts of potions - _mind-altering_ potions - can be extremely dangerous even when brewed by fully-qualified potioneers. You should know this. Do I need to ask Professor Snape whether he’s been neglecting to give his students appropriate safety warnings?”

“But there’s just too much to remember!” complained Annie Kowalski.

“It’s impossible!” Kimi added. “All the teachers think their subject is the most important! Especially McGonagall, she sets about a thousand feet of homework every week!”

“And I’ve got prefect duties to worry about as well!” said Hector.

“If Bill Weasley can achieve twelve OWLs while being prefect I’m sure you can each manage eight.”

That had perhaps been the wrong thing to say if the fifth years’ noisy complaints about Gryffindor bias and how the teachers always go easy on the Weasleys was anything to go by. Hopefully it would distract them enough to keep them away from illegal potions, at least. Regulus quietly summoned Kreacher and asked him to take the bottles to Madam Pomfrey for inspection, hoping she might be able to shed some light on where they had been brewed. He would be having strong words with Georgia Burke if they turned out to be even the slightest bit dangerous.

All the Slytherins managed to get through exam week in one piece, although there had been a close call with Blythe Wrightstone. The normally mild-mannered seventh-year had had to be talked down from setting the entire castle on fire just so she wouldn’t have to sit her Arithmancy NEWT.

“I’m going to fail!”

“No you’re not,” Regulus said patiently. “Look at these notes - I’ve never seen anything more meticulous in my entire existence. You _know_ this, Blythe.”

“I don’t! I don’t know anything! I’m going to fail and I’ll lose my internship and I’ll never get to be Minister!”

“Listen,” Regulus said, glancing nervously as sparks flew from the end of Blythe’s wand, perilously close to the common room’s heavy velvet curtains, “you certainly won’t become Minister if you end up in Azkaban after committing arson. Is your internship conditional on achieving your Arithmancy NEWT?”

“Yes!” she wailed.

“And what grade do you need?”

“Exceeds Expectations!”

“Well then!” he said, beaming encouragingly. “That gives you some wriggle room, doesn’t it? Professor Vector told me you haven’t achieved less than an Outstanding on any of your coursework this year. You’ll be just fine, Blythe.”

And she had been. She’d skipped out of her last exam with a wide smile on her face, loudly proclaiming - to the horror of a group of nearby Ravenclaws - how _easy_ the notoriously tricky final four-page Arithmancy problem had been. 

In fact, most of the Slytherins seemed happy with their performances. And those that weren’t were still keen to forget the horrors of revision and exams by joining in with the common room celebrations. Regulus made the wise decision to leave them to it; they didn’t need a weird perpetually-teenage ghost cramping their style, and he didn’t need to know how much firewhisky the elder students had snuck in, nor what they got up to under its influence.

On his way to the old Alchemy professor’s office he had claimed for his own, Regulus couldn’t help but pause outside the abandoned classroom that had held the enchanted mirror all those months ago. He peeped inside. The mirror wasn’t there, of course. He hadn’t seen it for months. But he couldn’t resist checking - on a night where the rest of the castle was celebrating, he felt particularly melancholic. He remembered that single time he had thought his parents had been proud of him, the tilt of his father’s head and the glistening of his mother’s eyes as he proudly read out his OWL results.

By the time his NEWTs had come around, he had already become a Death Eater. He had already signed his life away to a wizard whose name he didn’t even know and had already committed heinous crimes for the sake of a cause he didn’t even particularly believe in. He had ended up disappointing his parents far more than Sirius had ever done. 

With a sigh, Regulus turned from the empty classroom and crossed the corridor into the office. Kreacher was there, hovering around the desk with an enormous feather duster in his hand. 

“Hello, Kreacher!” said Regulus, pleasantly surprised to see his old friend there.

Kreacher flinched and spun around, brandishing the feather duster like a sword. “Master Regulus mustn’t sneak up on Kreacher like that!”

“I do apologise,” Regulus said, trying not to laugh.

Regulus settled himself down at the desk and closed his eyes, feeling more serene than he had in weeks. Kreacher had lit the fireplace and he could just about feel its warmth at his back and see, through his eyelids, how it was filling the small room with a soft glow.

“The children are _celebrating_ ,” Kreacher said, with some distaste. “They traipse in and out of the kitchens, shouting and clattering around, demanding this and that of poor old Kreacher.”

“They deserve a night to celebrate. They’ve all worked very hard.”

“None of them works as hard as Master Regulus,” Kreacher muttered, swiping his duster along the edge of the desk. “Master Regulus is the most hard-working. The most talented. A very clever boy,” he looked up, his eyes wide. “Would Master Regulus like a cake?”

Regulus gave him a sad smile. It felt, sometimes, as though Kreacher had forgotten that Regulus was a ghost and still saw him as the scared, confused eighteen-year-old he had been when he had died. Regulus didn’t know whether it was a lingering after-effect of the potion Kreacher had drunk in the cave mingling with his elf magic, or a result of the piling traumas he had experienced over the years. 

“No, thank you, Kreacher,” he said softly. “I’m not feeling particularly hungry right now.”

Kreacher nodded but cast a suspicious glance at Regulus before he wandered off to the wall-length windows on the other side of the office. He pulled a cloth out of a pocket hidden inside his tea towel and began polishing the lower pane of glass.

“Have you heard anything new from Gringotts, Kreacher?”

“No, Master Regulus,” said Kreacher, his shoulders sagging. Regulus readied himself to intervene, in case Kreacher should decide that this deserved punishment. “The nasty goblins won’t talk to Kreacher. But Kreacher has another letter for Master Regulus.”

He shuffled over to the desk, leaving the cloth to polish by itself, and produced a gleaming white scroll. He handed it over to Regulus as though it were the most precious thing in the world; Regulus thanked him and unfurled the scroll.

_If Mr Black is so dissatisfied with Gringott’s policy re: deceased ownership, might we suggest that he take the matter up with the Ministry._

_FORTIVS QVO FIDELIVS_

Regulus tossed the curling white parchment across the desk and leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

“I’ve been _trying_ to consult with the Spirit Division,” he grumbled, “but they are exceedingly unhelpful.”

“The Ministry is filled with bureaucrats and nonsense,” Kreacher said sagely, echoing Regulus’s grandfather’s oft-repeated words.

Regulus murmured an agreement. Grandfather Arcturus would have proven a most helpful ally in these matters if only he hadn’t died and had the discourtesy to ‘move on’. But then again, if Arcturus had still been alive then Regulus wouldn’t be faced with this inheritance issue in the first place. He’d have the whole _other_ issue of explaining to his formidable grandfather why he had decided to make the stupid error of signing his life away to a death cult, and then the even _more_ stupid error of sneaking around said death cult to attempt to take it down from the inside. 

And he wasn’t even sure anymore if that had worked. 

He swivelled his chair around to face the fire, as though gazing into the burning flames would bring him any sort of epiphany. 

Eventually, Kreacher spoke up again. 

“Kreacher has been following the stinking one again,” he said casually.

Regulus sat up straight. “Quirrell?”

“What a strange wizard. Very strange indeed. Kreacher suspects he is a mud—” he glanced at Regulus, who raised an eyebrow, and corrected himself, “a _muggle-born_. Kreacher has heard him talking to someone who isn’t there many, many times.”

“Someone who isn’t there? Were they wearing an invisibility cloak, perhaps?” Regulus asked, thinking of Harry Potter’s nighttime jaunts. “Or under a disillusionment charm?”

“Kreacher didn’t detect anything, Master Regulus.”

Regulus hummed and leaned back, crossing his legs. “What was he talking about with this invisible person?”

“Kreacher heard the great stink _begging_ ,” he said scornfully. “Proper wizards do not beg. Kreacher is glad to serve the House of Black and not a reeking muttonhead like _him_.”

Regulus didn’t care to remind Kreacher that technically he served Hogwarts, now, and not the Blacks. “What was he begging for?”

“More time,” Kreacher said. With a flick of his wrist, he sent his polishing cloth floating upwards to reach the upper parts of the window, and added, “His life.”

This revelation hit Regulus like a bludger to the chest. He stared at Kreacher in horror as his whirling mind could come to only one conclusion as to why Quirrell might resort to begging an undetectable presence for his life.

The Dark Lord.

He now strongly suspected that the thing Draco had seen in the Forest was the Dark Lord. Quirrell was trying to perform some sort of resurrection ritual, seeking something restorative - and Draco had seen him drinking unicorn blood. But unicorn blood was useless on ghosts, which meant the Dark Lord wasn’t a ghost, which meant _he wasn’t properly dead_ , he…

He must have made more than one horcrux. 

Regulus curled in on himself, tucking his hands into his armpits, and leaned forwards. He was an idiot. A bloody idiot. He’d been distracted by his students and their exams when he should have been focused on this, he should have been trying to work out what the fuck kind of insidious—

“Master Regulus?”

Dumbledore knew. Dumbledore _must_ know. Dumbledore had been trying to distract him, that time, trying to get him to look away. But Dumbledore couldn’t know about the horcrux - the horcrux _es_ \- unless he did, and he suspected that Regulus had something to do with it? Did he assume that Regulus was working with Quirrell?

 _Think, Regulus,_ think _you idiot!_

What was it Quirrell had said, in his office, last year? Something about needing Regulus’s help - something about bringing the Dark Lord back, yes, but how - something about a— a stone.

Harry had mentioned a stone, too. In the context of Snape, and— he should have known Snape would be in on this. _He should have known_! And what the fuck was Harry planning? Why couldn’t Gryffindors ever keep their bloody noses out of trouble?

“Master Regulus?”

“I’m going to the library,” he said abruptly, and fled.

The library was almost pitch black and Regulus, the idiot that he was, hadn’t thought to bring a candle. He floated past bookshelf after bookshelf, finding his way by memory more than by the scant light of the stars, but it was a fruitless mission because he didn’t have a clue what he should be looking for in the first place.

The so-called Resurrection Stone was the first thing that came to mind, but that was a myth, wasn’t it? A children’s story rooted in fiction rather than reality. But then again, he had thought that Slytherin’s locket had been a mythical object until he had held it in his own hands.

Was the Resurrection Stone here, in the castle? Was that why Quirrell had returned from his travels, to use a teaching position as cover while he searched Hogwarts for something with which he could restore the Dark Lord to life?

The enchanted mirror had shown Regulus alive. Had shown his mother and father alive. 

Was it powered by the Stone, somehow? 

Regulus stood frozen in the middle of the library, staring straight ahead as though he could manifest the mirror or the Stone right there. He caught sight of movement in one of the large portraits hanging between bookcases, and a painted lamp bobbed into view.

“Grandfather!” he gasped, never having felt more pleased to see Phineas Nigellus Black in all his life. Or death. “I need your help, I—”

“Calm down, Regulus, or I shall return to my own portrait,” Phineas said with a dramatic sigh, as he elbowed the poor librarian witch out of her frame. “You young people, always hurtling from one idea to the next, never stopping to _think_.”

“Grandfather, this is urgent, I—”

“Your Dark Lord was here.”

Regulus’s jaw dropped. He felt sick and dizzy and quivery all over; he stared at his great-grandfather’s portrait in stunned silence.

“Don’t _gape_ , Regulus, you look like a haddock.”

“Wh-where…?”

“The forbidden corridor on the third floor - I suppose that’s why it was forbidden. You’d think Albus would have had the courtesy to let us headmasters know about it, but he’s always been a dunderhead. Now, before you go hurtling off—”

Regulus stopped and turned back around to face the portrait, ever the dutiful grandson.

“—you should know that he has been defeated, _again_ , but a teacher has died and a child is unconscious in the hospital wing.”

“Who?” he demanded, fearing that he already knew the answer.

“That odd fellow with the hat… Quimble, is it?”

“Not _him_ ,” Regulus said, exasperated. “The child!’

“Alright, alright, no need to get snuffy. The famous one, with the… you know,” said Phineas, gesturing towards his forehead.

“Harry Potter?”

“Yes, him. Now, listen— Regulus! I have not dismissed you! _Regulus_!” 

Phineas Nigellus tried to follow him through the castle, but he could only stumble from portrait to portrait; walls and ceilings and floors meant nothing to a ghost and Regulus was faster. 

The library wasn’t too far from the forbidden corridor. Regulus found a door ajar and drifted straight through, almost dying all over again - this time from shock - as he edged past a terrifying, hulking, but thankfully sleeping cerberus. He drifted through room after room filled with what had apparently been defences, or trials of some description. 

No wonder Quirrell had tried to enlist his help. Nobody had thought to make these defences impenetrable for a ghost; Regulus drifted straight through each barrier until he reached a wall of black flames. He could see movement on the other side, and pushed himself through the fire.

“Ah, Regulus,” said Dumbledore, turning immediately to face him. “I suspected I might see you here before long. Did Phineas Nigellus inform you of tonight’s events?”

“You knew!” Regulus exclaimed. “You _knew_ about this! You knew what Quirrell was planning - you deliberately tried to keep me distracted - you knew that Harry was going to get involved - the child is in _hospital_ , Dumbledore!”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said calmly. “I knew.”

“I…” Regulus hesitated, wrong-footed by Dumbledore’s frankness. He looked around him, taking in the dark stone-walled chamber for the first time. There, glimmering in the scant light Dumbledore had conjured, was the enchanted mirror.

Regulus couldn’t help himself from drifting towards it, but Dumbledore stayed him with a hand to his shoulder. 

“He’s in hospital,” Regulus repeated. “He’s just a child, he… he’s just a child.”

“Harry will make a full recovery. I didn’t realise you held such affection for the boy. I had rather thought, given your feelings on his father--”

“You know nothing of how I feel about James Potter.”

Regulus glared at the enchanted mirror. If it wasn’t for James Potter, perhaps what he had seen in his reflection would have come true. 

“Perhaps not,” Dumbledore said lightly, turning his back to Regulus. 

“What happened?” asked Regulus, his throat tight as he swallowed his bubbling emotions. “The Dark... he didn’t get the Stone, did he?”

“He did not.”

“Is it… is it still in the mirror?”

“It has been destroyed.”

Regulus gave a jerky nod. That was good. If the Resurrection Stone had existed, after all, then it was good it had been destroyed. No one person should ever be allowed to have that kind of power over the natural order of things. 

His eyes drifted away from the mirror and landed on a pile of ash, a sight that seemed at odds with the rest of the room. He recoiled almost instantly. 

“I’m afraid I shall have to find a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor,” Dumbledore said, quite glibly. 

Regulus blinked. “ _Harry_ did that?”

“Quite by accident, I’m sure.”

Regulus didn’t find that particularly reassuring. “But the D— You-Know-Who…?”

“There is much that you and I need to discuss. In the meantime, it suffices to say that Voldemort has been defeated once more,” Dumbledore said, stepping away from Regulus to draw his wand over Quirrell’s remains. “I shall send for you when it is time, Regulus.”

Regulus knew when he was being dismissed. And as much as he disliked Dumbledore, as much as he wanted to take him to task for allowing a child to put themselves in this much danger, to attempt - no matter how successfully he had done so - to stand up to the Dark Lord, for a _second_ time… there was no point arguing over Quirrell’s remains. 

No. There would be plenty of time for arguments in the weeks and months to come. 

Dawn was breaking by the time Regulus reached the hospital wing, its rosy golden light pouring through the leaded windows and casting the room in a soft, peaceful glow. Regulus scanned the beds in their neat rows with their smooth white sheets, and floated uneasily towards the one with its curtains drawn. He slipped inside.

Harry was sleeping, his breathing deep and even. There were a few pinkish lines across his face from cuts or grazes that were healing, and his hair looked a little dusty and even messier than usual, but he appeared otherwise unharmed. Regulus breathed a sigh of relief and slumped into the chair at his bedside. 

Regulus felt a tsunami of guilt flood his insides, overwhelming him with its force. This was his fault. All of it. He had had suspicions about Snape, about Quirrell, about the bloody Dark Lord himself for months. He had known about the Dark Lord’s secret for thirteen years. 

And yet he had done nothing. He had allowed this child to put himself in danger because he had been too scared to voice his suspicions, had been too scared about what Dumbledore might do to him if he found out what he had done. It was ridiculous. He was dead. Whatever suffering Dumbledore could bring on him was nothing compared to what this child had already suffered.

Hell, if Regulus had just gone to Dumbledore - or Sirius, or _anyone_ \- back in 1979 then perhaps Harry wouldn’t have suffered through any of this at all. Perhaps Sirius would never have betrayed Harry’s parents. Perhaps they would still be alive.

“Professor Snape has sent me the results of the potions test.”

Regulus looked up, startled, to see Madam Pomfrey standing above him with her hands on her hips and a stern expression on her face. The room was bright, now, the sun fully risen; he wasn’t sure how long he had sat there watching Harry sleep.

“I assume that is why you are here,” Madam Pomfrey continued. 

Regulus nodded, his eyes flicking back to Harry. He looked so _small._

“Well, your suspicions were correct,” she sighed. “A counterfeit potion, brewed with eggs from a chicken instead of a runespoor. Professor Snape doesn’t think that the effects would have been fatal but those children are still lucky you were there to stop them drinking it.”

“Try telling them that,” Regulus muttered. “Hector is convinced I’m the reason he’s not going to make it onto the Auror training programme.”

“He’s got a few more years of study before he comes to that hurdle and I’m sure he’ll have forgiven you by then,” she said briskly. “Now. What are you doing sitting beside young Mr Potter here?”

Regulus raised a shoulder in a half-shrug; truthfully, he had no idea. Harry was sleeping, and even if he wasn’t, how was Regulus possibly supposed to broach the subject of the Dark Lord with him? He shouldn’t have come here at all. It was his fault Harry was here, his fault that Harry had never had the chance to know his parents. Harry’s friends were right: he _was_ bad news. 

“Ten minutes,” Madam Pomfrey said firmly. “And I’m only giving you that long because I know you can behave yourself, unlike that brother of yours.”

“Do you know what happened to him? To Harry?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I did,” she said, tapping the side of her nose. “Patient confidentiality, you know that.”

He didn’t miss the glance she cast at his left forearm.

“Harry will be alright though, won’t he?” he asked quietly.

“He’ll be just fine, Regulus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter, one more to go! I'm sketching an outline for the second part so this will definitely be continued at some point, subscribe to me/the series if you want a notification when it's published. Or come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://unspeakable3.tumblr.com/)
> 
> And thank you, everyone, for your messages and comments and kudos and everything - this sprawled from a silly shower thought and I'm delighted that other people are enjoying it! <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time: exams happened, Quirrell died, Regulus got his Stones muddled up.

Draco had spent the days after the incident with Quirrell and the Resurrection Stone simultaneously delighted that Harry had been hospitalised - “Are you just pretending that he’ll be alright because you think we’re concerned? Do you think he’ll have to be transferred to St Mungo’s? Do you think he’s been so mutilated that he’ll never be able to show his face again?” - and aggrieved by the fact that, once again, the entire school was talking about ‘ _ Saint Potter _ ’. 

“I suppose he’ll have another stupid scar for everyone to  _ fawn  _ over,” Draco grumbled late one afternoon in the common room. “There’s nothing special about a scar. I could get a scar if I wanted to.”

Regulus sighed and turned away from the window, where he had been hoping to catch sight of a merperson. He hadn’t seen one in a month or two, and it was bothering him.

“Why aren’t you out in the grounds with everyone else?” asked Regulus. “It’s a beautiful day - you could paddle in the Lake or climb a tree or play a game with your friends. It’s no good staying cooped up inside all day.”

“I’m not a  _ child _ . I don’t need to  _ play with my friends _ .”

“You’re twelve, Draco. Go outside and enjoy the sunshine, let yourself have some fun.”

“Why don’t  _ you _ ?”

“Fine,” Regulus sighed. “I will.”

He left Draco to sulk, alone, in the gloomy dungeons and drifted upwards through the empty castle, pausing at a balcony on one of the upper floors to look out onto the grounds below. There were groups of students haphazardly dressed in varying degrees of wizard and muggle clothing, all jumbled up together to make it impossible to tell which house they were in.

_ As it ought to be _ , he thought.

There were some older students playing a rather odd variant of fanged frisbee - he was aware that they had been banned and that he ought to alert Filch, but it was the end of term and the students deserved their fun - which involved one person sat atop another’s shoulders. They toppled over onto the grass with alarming regularity and didn’t seem to ever manage to catch the frisbee. That seemed to negate the point of the game, in Regulus’s opinion, but the players were laughing raucously so he supposed they must be enjoying it.

At a window further along the corridor, he caught sight of a group of younger students sat in a circle with what looked like a giant pack of exploding snap cards. Regulus felt an ache of guilt that Harry wasn’t out there with them. That he couldn’t be out there, in the sunshine, with his friends, because Regulus had failed to act quickly enough. 

He swallowed and turned from the window. He would go to the hospital wing and see if Harry was awake at last. 

As he turned Regulus almost passed right through Professor Dumbledore. He managed to move aside just in time; Dumbledore gave him the briefest nod and continued whistling some obscure tune as he walked away, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

The old man was infuriating. He hadn’t spoken to Regulus since the incident - had barely even  _ looked  _ at him, as though Regulus’s opinion and experiences couldn’t possibly matter. Regulus scowled at Dumbledore’s back and continued on to the hospital wing.

He paused just outside the door and heard Madam Pomfrey fussing over Harry, apparently trying to get him back to sleep. The child sounded frustrated. Regulus could sympathise; he had suffered his own fair share of injuries and knew how irritating it could be to be stuck in bed, especially at the end of term, especially when the sun was shining,  _ especially  _ when there were things that needed to be done.

He drifted into the room and approached Harry’s bed. Harry immediately stiffened, straightening his back and tightening his grip around the box of Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans in his hands. Madam Pomfrey turned and rolled her eyes. 

“You as well - it’s like Diagon Alley in here today!” she scolded, wagging her finger at Regulus. “ _ Five minutes _ . And then Mr Potter here needs to go back to sleep.”

She bustled away and Regulus sat down in the seat beside Harry’s bed. He felt the boy’s eyes on him as he stared down at his own feet. He cleared his throat. He felt terribly awkward.

“How… how do you feel?” Regulus asked, after an uncomfortable silence that felt like it had stretched on for years.

“Alright.”

“Good,” he nodded. “That’s… that’s good.”

“Thought you’d maybe come to finish me off,” Harry said, in a voice that sounded far too nonchalant.

Regulus looked up in alarm. “No! That’s not— sweet Circe,  _ no _ . I… I’ve done very many stupid things, Harry, but I never intended for you to be harmed.”

“I heard you hated my dad.”

“You are not James.”

The tense, uncomfortable silence returned. Regulus tried not to flinch under Harry’s remarkably scrutinising glare. At last, Harry relaxed against the pile of pillows at his back once more, apparently too exhausted to put up much more of a fight. Regulus knew the feeling.

“Snape hates me because of my dad,” Harry said quietly.

“Severus hates a great many people, you’re not that special.”

Regulus’s eyes widened in horror at what he had just said, to the _ Boy-Who-Lived _ , of all people. To his surprise, Harry gave a little huff of a laugh and extended his arm, rattling the box of jellybeans at Regulus. 

“Want one?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not even Bertie Bott has managed to invent a flavour that ghosts find palatable,” Regulus said wistfully. Salazar knew how many years it had been since he’d tasted an Every-Flavour Bean, or  _ any  _ sweet for that matter. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, the ghost thing,” Harry said, looking a little bashful, and settled back against his pillows once more. 

“Harry…” Regulus started, twisting his hands in his lap. “I’m truly very sorry. I had my suspicions, about Quirrell, and after you and Draco had been in the Forest, I—”

“Malfoy knows it was Voldemort?”

“No… he thought you had seen a dementor, but he told me enough that I could surmise that, well— I’m not sure how much you know, how much I should say…”

“What’s a dementor?”

Regulus opened his mouth in surprise. It was easy to forget that Harry had been raised by muggles, far away from the prying eyes of the wizarding world. It seemed almost perverse that magical children had grown up knowing Harry’s story while he, according to the castle gossip, had had no knowledge of it whatsoever until he had received his Hogwarts letter. 

“A dementor,” Regulus said, “is a creature that guards Azkaban. The wizarding prison. They… they’re not very pleasant.”

“Oh. Well, Voldemort’s not very pleasant either so I s’pose Malfoy wasn’t far off.”

Regulus couldn’t help but laugh. ‘ _ Not very pleasant _ ’ was one way to describe the Dark Lord. 

“I’m sorry you had to face him alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Harry shrugged. “I had Ron and Hermione.”

“You’re all children. You shouldn’t have been in that position… I should have intervened. I should have said something sooner. I’m sorry, Harry.”

“It’s alright. It all worked out, didn’t it? And Professor Dumbledore said we have to keep fighting him, keep delaying him so he doesn’t come back to power.”

“Yes,” Regulus nodded, his anger towards Dumbledore increasing with every moment - how  _ dare  _ he suggest to Harry, a  _ child _ , that it was his responsibility to fight the Dark Lord? “Yes, we do.”

A couple of days later the lower years awoke to find envelopes bearing their names hanging on the common room noticeboard: their exam results. 

They tore into them eagerly while the upper years watched on with envy - they would have to wait a week or more while EELS, the External Examinations Liaison Service, finished marking their written papers.

Draco let out a whoop of delight and Regulus hurried over to congratulate him.

“Well done, Draco,” he said, feeling a burst of pride in his hollow chest as he read the parchment.

“I knew I would come top of the year,” Draco said quickly. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’ve done very well, but you don’t know that you’re top—”

“Who else would get all Outstandings?  _ Saint Potter _ ?” Draco scoffed. “He can barely hold a quill. What did you get, Theo?”

Theo’s hands were clenching his own parchment, his brow furrowed as he read and reread his results.

“Er, mostly Outstanding,” he said slowly. 

“Mostly? Let’s see—” Draco snatched Theo’s results to read them for himself “—only an Acceptable in Astronomy? Don’t you have an observatory at home? That’s sad.”

“I do, I just—”

“Exceeds in Defence?” Draco snorted and thrust the parchment back at Theo. “Shocking, Theo. Blaise, what about you?”

As Draco whirled away to compare his results with the other first years and prove right his insistence that he had come top of the year, Regulus drifted closer to Theo.

“You did well,” he said, gesturing to the results.

“I didn’t. I got an Acceptable.”

“An Acceptable is still a pass - you’re only in first year, Theo.”

“My father won’t consider it a pass,” he said, his shoulders slumped.

“Our fathers aren’t always right.”

Theo shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He thinks he’s right.”

“Theo…” Regulus hesitated, unsure of himself, unsure if he was overstepping some invisible boundary. “I’m quite good at Astronomy. It sort of comes with being a Black, you know… if you want help, next year, you only have to ask. Not just with Astronomy, either - I don’t know who the new Defence professor will be but if they’re as useless as Quirrell…”

He trailed off, Theo’s wide eyes disarming him.

“You’d do that? You’d… you’d help me?”

“Of course. Whatever you need.”

Theo looked away and gave him a jerky nod. “Thank you,” he said, his voice choked.

“That’s quite alright, Regulus said and patted him on the shoulder, feeling quite choked himself. “Write to me over the summer, will you? I want to make sure— I mean… I’d like to know how you’re getting on.”

Theo nodded again. “Yeah, I will. If— if you want.”

“Good. Alright,” Regulus said breezily, “you’d better run along and make sure you’ve got everything ready for going home, there won’t be time in the morning. Draco!” he called out. “Blaise - have you both packed your trunks?”

Later that night he accompanied Cariad and Blythe - who had now fully recovered from her brush with arson, and did  _ not  _ like to be reminded of it - to the end of term feast. Slytherin house had been filled with excitement since exams had finished, buoyed by the knowledge that they had filled their hourglass with enough emeralds to win the House Cup and that there was very little they, or anyone else, could do to lose it. 

“I can’t believe we’ve won the Cup every year we’ve been here,” said Cariad. “It felt amazing enough before, but now that I’m Head Girl…” she sighed happily, tilting her head to the ceiling. “I just can’t believe it!”

“You deserve it,” said Regulus. “You’ve all worked very hard.”

“There were times when I thought your Draco might lose it for us… keep him on the right track, won’t you? Rivalries with Gryffindor aren’t good for any of us.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, his chest warming at the sound of Draco being called  _ his _ . 

“Seven in a row,” breathed Blythe, running her hand along the stone wall. She paused at a suit of armour and rubbed its elbow for luck. Regulus stared at her hand, something sharp twisting where his stomach used to be. He had known someone else who had followed that superstition, once, when he had been alive. “Is that the longest?”

He blinked and tore his gaze back to Blythe’s face. “I’m sorry?”

“Seven years,” she repeated. “Is that the longest run?”

“Oh, I’m not sure… it’s the longest in my existence, I think.”

“Isn’t it  _ beautiful _ ?” Cariad exclaimed.

They had reached the Great Hall. Blythe spun around in the entrance, her arms flung wide, a beaming smile on her face while Cariad watched, laughing. Beyond them, the whole room shimmered in the silver and green colours of Slytherin house: the tablecloths, the bunting, the crockery and candles and  _ everything _ . There was an enormous banner emblazoned with Slytherin’s serpent across the far wall, and smaller ones hanging above each of the long student tables, and above the fireplaces.

It was perfect. Regulus beamed and joined in with the students’ excitable chatter at the Slytherin table, leaving Cariad and Blythe to settle down beside Draco. Now that term was drawing to a close he was determined to spend as much time with his cousin as he could - to try and guide him onto the right path, as Cariad had urged him to do. 

“Is there some special reward for winning, do you think?” Draco was asking. “Like emeralds? From the hourglass?”

“My mother says emeralds would suit me very well,” said Pansy. “She says I’m not allowed to wear them until I’m thirteen but I steal her jewellery all the time.”

He recalled Theodore telling him that his aunt - Pansy’s mother - was one of Regulus’s old classmates. She, too, had had light fingers and a fondness for sparkling trinkets. Regulus had once, unwittingly and unpleasantly, found himself on a Hogsmeade date with her. She had been horrified at his confession that he would, actually, prefer to spend an afternoon in the bookshop to making awkward conversation over a pot of tea in Madam Puddifoot’s. 

As tiresome as he had found Iris Nott to be, Regulus was glad she had found a more suitable partner in Perseus Parkinson. He was glad she had had the opportunity to live, and to build a family because Salazar knew she wouldn’t have had it with  _ him _ .

At that moment Dumbledore strode into the Great Hall, his glittering robes streaming behind him, and took his position at the lectern. He raised his hand and the room fell quiet; the Slytherins up and down the table exchanged grins with one another. Regulus glanced up and caught sight of Cariad almost quivering in excitement, her hands clasped firmly in Blythe’s. 

“Father will be thrilled,” said Draco in a loud whisper, as Dumbledore read out the house points. “He won the Cup every year when he was a student, you know. I expect I shall do the same.”

Regulus was so delighted for his Slytherins that he didn’t even care to correct Draco. Lucius could keep his false boasts. It didn’t matter. Not when the children were jumping up onto their feet, banging their goblets on the table, and yelling in victory. He beamed at them - he was so  _ proud  _ of them - and joined in their exultant chants of  _ SLYTH-ER-IN! SLYTH-ER-IN!  _

But Dumbledore raised his voice above the din and announced that more points were yet to be awarded. 

“More points?”

“What does he mean?”

“The Quidditch points have all been given, haven’t they?”

“Perhaps I’ll be given additional points for coming top of the year.”

This last was from Draco. Regulus hushed him, frowning at Dumbledore. As the headmaster spoke - as he gave more and more points to Harry and his friends - the atmosphere around the Slytherin table grew cold. Tense jaws, clenched fists: they were furious.  _ He  _ was furious. 

Dumbledore granted the final points and tore the House Cup out of the Slytherins’ fingers. The Gryffindor table erupted into a cacophony of whoops and cheers and Regulus’s ears were ringing with the  _ injustice  _ of it. He heard Cariad’s wail of disbelief, heard the others yelling how unfair it was, heard Draco loudly complaining, yet again, that his father would hear about this. 

They grew subdued as the food appeared on the table before them, their yells suppressed to grumbles. The platters piled high with roasted meats and glazed vegetables remained mostly untouched, left to grow cold as the Slytherins pushed their forks morosely across golden plates that had once been silver, resting on red tablecloths that had once been green. Regulus commiserated with them, tried to cheer them up, but his heart wasn’t in it. He just about managed to restrain himself from insulting Dumbledore right there in the Great Hall, but the evening seemed to stretch on and on and  _ on _ .

Eventually, they all shuffled back to the common room. The Slytherins’ feelings of resentment towards the Gryffindors, and their headmaster in particular, rumbled on all night. What should have been a celebration of winning the House Cup for the seventh year in a row - and what a magnificent, portentous moment  _ seven  _ years would have been - ended with deflated Slytherins draped all over the common room debating the many ways they would like to take down Gryffindor house. 

Regulus ought to have intervened and stemmed the flow of abuse, but he was just as furious as his charges were. He pitied Cariad, who had worked exceptionally hard that year as Head Girl to earn the trust of students from other houses. 

“I know those children deserved the points for what they did but— but it’s just so unfair!” said Cariad, her chin trembling as Blythe guided her to one of the couches.

“It’s very unfair,” Blythe agreed and wrapped her arm around Cariad’s shoulders.

“Why did he have to wait until the feast to award the points? When the Hall was decorated in  _ our  _ colours? Why did he have to  _ humiliate  _ us like that?”

“Because he’s a bastard,” said Blythe, her soothing voice concealing the venom in her words. “He’s always favoured Gryffindor. Remember how bitter he was last year?”

“It’s not fair,” Cariad sniffed.

Blythe kissed her forehead. “I know. But we won’t be in his bastard school for much longer. We’ll be at the Ministry and we’ll make him do extra paperwork every time he visits. We’ll pretend we don’t know who he is and we’ll make him wear a name badge.”

Cariad was right: Dumbledore  _ had _ been unfair. He  _ had  _ humiliated them. There was no need for him to have awarded Harry and his friends those additional points at the very last moment, no matter how much they deserved them. It was as though he had calculated the precise amount of points he would need to give them to snatch victory from Slytherin. There was no need to have done it when Slytherin had already celebrated their win, when the Great Hall had already been decked out in Slytherin colours. 

Didn’t Dumbledore realise the heartbreak he had caused? Not just to Cariad. Not just to the other seventh years, who would never have the chance to make up for this loss. Not just to the first years, experiencing their headmaster’s bias against their house in such a public manner for the very first time, the confusion and upset plainly visible on their faces. But to all of them, this was proof that no matter how hard they worked, no matter how well they behaved or how good their essays were or how many Quidditch matches they won, it wouldn’t be good enough to shake off the shadows of their fathers’ and grandfathers’ actions.

Regulus sat simmering in his rage all night, staring broodily into the fire long after the children had finally retired to their dormitories. None of it was fair. It hadn’t been fair when he had been alive, when he had been a student - when he had seen James Potter lifting the Quidditch Cup, when he had seen his brother praised for escaping their family, when he had watched his friends hexed and tortured and  _ killed  _ by Dumbledore’s side as much as the Dark Lord’s.

Nobody had cared then. No adult, no teacher had extended their hand. No one had offered him sanctuary, or even an alternative - no one had realised that Sirius had only been able to escape because he had the support around him, had Potter’s welcoming parents, while Regulus was left behind to placate their own family. 

And what had Regulus had? Friendships as shallow as a puddle. Sleepless night after sleepless night, terrified that he would whisper something in a dream. Terrified the boys in the beds around him - his friends, his  _ cousin  _ \- would hex him in his sleep and drag him to the Dark Lord for daring to even think about betrayal.

Nobody cared now, either.

The Dark Lord was trying to return. Dumbledore knew that. And still he threw children into danger. Still he ignored the warning signs. 

Regulus saw them. He saw echoes of his own past in Theo, in Cassius, in Draco. 

Theo was terrified of his father and the pressure weighing down on him; worried that he wasn’t good enough, that he would fail to live up to his family’s expectations, that he would never reach the ever-shifting goal hoops. Cassius had been denied the one thing that he loved, Quidditch, and was searching for something to be a part of, searching for somewhere to belong. Draco had lived a life of luxury, had been brought up being told he was the most important thing in the world, that blood was the most important thing in the world and that  _ his blood  _ was the most important blood of all…

He would stop it. He had to. He had to be there for them because nobody else would be. He would show them that there  _ was  _ an alternative, that they didn’t have to blindly follow their fathers’ footsteps, that they had  _ choices _ . Difficult ones, yes. But they had choices.

He would make sure that his death wasn’t in vain, but could serve as a warning: your family don’t care about you. Your teachers and your headmaster don’t care about you. The Dark Lord doesn’t care about you, either.

_ But I do _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around to the end! There will definitely be a part two :)


End file.
